부산대학교 도서관

The Mycenaean cemetery of Deiras has enjoyed relatively little attention by Aegean scholars. This is mainly due to the rather modest character of its contents, which does not favor quantitative analysis of “wealth” and “status” differences among individuals. Based on the assumption that mortuary patterns “mirror” social structure, such approaches have been extensively used to analyze social complexity and “explain” state-formation processes in Mycenaean Greece. Recent theoretical discussions, however, have demonstrated the limitations of such reflexive approaches. Funerals are now seen as dynamic fields of social performance and negotiation, which may skew rather than “reveal” intergroup relations. To understand their importance, one needs to examine them within their specific context, i.e., in dialogue with what preexisted, not what followed. In this chapter, we apply such an approach on the Mycenaean cemetery of Deiras. First we examine the gradual development of the cemetery in the context of Argos and how it related to other burial grounds and the settlement of the site. Then we attempt a comparative examination with other Mycenaean cemeteries of the Argolid. It is suggested that LH IIB/IIIA1 was the period of most intense deposition of valuables in Argolic graves, and the stage during which a number of typically “Mycenaean” practices and symbolisms were standardized. This raises the question whether one should look at this period, rather than the much more diverse LH I–IIA, for the rise of a common code of funerary behavior, which used exclusive ritual performances in the entrances of the tombs and the disposal of material acquisitions as basic indices of social identity. This may have had wider repercussions: the distribution of valuables in LH IIB/IIIA1 suggests that it was during this period when Mycenae acquired a special role as a major re-distributive centre in the Argolid.