Women in Mycenaean Greece by Barbara A. Olsen

A Rich Athenian LadyĮven though the trench was damaged by later activity, Agora Tomb 15 was not looted: there are more than 80 catalogued finds.

In some cases, swords were bent into rings and placed around the neck of the amphora for burial.

The grave goods in these trenches could be many and various, but would usually include plenty of pots and some metal objects, including weapons and horse bits. The amphora would be placed in the hole, while the remains of the pyre and other grave goods could be swept into the trench. The “trench-and-hole” refers to the final burial place: a rectangular trench with a circular hole at one end. Belly-handled amphora, closed with a cup, that was used as the urn in Agora Tomb 15. The amphora could then be closed with a variety of objects, from complete pots or sherds, to bronze bowls or phalara (usually interpreted as shield bosses), to large stones. In trench-and-hole cremation, surviving bones were collected from the pyre and placed inside an amphora along with some grave goods, which may or may not have also been burned on the pyre. These trench-and-hole burials are a form of secondary cremation, that is, a mode of cremation in which the body is burned separately and in a different location from where the cremated remains are eventually buried. Trench and hole burialĮarly Iron Age Athenian burials from the tenth to the ninth century BC are remarkably consistent (Papadopoulos 2017a, pp. The grave of the “Rich Athenian Lady” was of the trench-and-hole type common in Early Iron Age Athens, but what was not common were the contents of the grave, which may well be the wealthiest Athenian grave in centuries. 124-176), the grave is more commonly known by the name given to it by archaeologist Evelyn Lord Smithson: the Rich Athenian Lady. While originally designated H 16:6 after its coordinates in the excavation plan and, as of the 2017 publication of the Early Iron Age graves in the Agora, numbered Tomb 15 (Papadopoulos and Smithson 2017, pp. Excavators investigating a road besides which the Late Bronze Age Athenians had buried their dead discovered a grave dated to the Early Geometric II Period (ca. In the summer excavation season of 1967, an astonishing grave was unearthed on the north slopes of the Areopagus in Athens. Content warning: death of a child death in childbirth

Women in Mycenaean Greece by Barbara A. Olsen