A new study suggests that the Mycenaeans turned tombs into works of art, arranging jewelry, weapons and vessels around the dead to create carefully planned displays. The research suggests these Bronze Age burials were designed not only to show wealth but also to influence how mourners saw and remembered the people they had lost.
Published in the Cambridge Archaeological Journal, the study by archaeologist Rachel Emma Phillips examines three undisturbed burials at Dendra in southern Greece. The graves are thought to date to around 1400 B.C., near the end of a period when burial customs across the Greek mainland were changing.
Excavators led by Axel Persson discovered the burials beneath the floor of a vaulted chamber in 1926. One skeleton had a necklace of gold rosettes and a belt of spiral-shaped pendants. Two others lay together in a separate pit, one surrounded by weapons, decorated cups, and other valuables.
Mycenaeans used gold, glass and weapons to turn tombs into art
Phillips argues that the position of the objects mattered alongside their value. Four swords lay with their hilts at the shoulders of the presumed male skeleton and their blades alongside the arms. A gold cup decorated with octopuses rested on his chest, holding six carved seals and four metal rings.
Material choices also point to a preference for shine and color. Neither of the two intact burial pits contained pottery, although metal vessels appeared in the double burial. Bronze fittings covered parts of a wooden box. Glass ornaments near the man’s head may have recreated the appearance of a boar’s tusk helmet, though another researcher has interpreted them as a headdress.
Phillips describes the resulting arrangements as “hybrid artworks,” created by bringing bodies and possessions together. The pits were so narrow that mourners would have viewed the displays from above before stone slabs closed them off. Torchlight may have made their reflective surfaces more striking.
How burial displays shaped the memory of the dead
The three bodies were decorated differently. Objects nearly hid the presumed male skeleton, while the two presumed female skeletons remained visible. Persson called them a king, queen, and princess, but Phillips cautions that these identities remain uncertain because the bones have not been examined using modern methods.
Earlier graves on mainland Greece typically held a crouched body and few objects. Between about 1700 and 1400 B.C., burials grew more elaborate, sometimes containing hundreds of possessions and several people. Phillips argues wealth alone cannot explain the change.
Precious objects could survive long after the bodies decayed. Placing durable materials against the deceased may have given mourners a lasting image of someone they had lost. Phillips sees these arrangements as creative responses to grief and remembrance.
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