Agora Deposit: P-Q 7-8:1
Title:   Artisan Grave
Supervisor:   Eugene Vanderpool
    Homer A. Thompson
Category:   Burial
Description:   Mycenaean Grave to W. of "Court Room" below Stoa Terrace with "Ballot Box" (Grave XXIX).
Unusual type, conforming neither to our pit nor to our cist graves, and consisted of two parts. The outer part was a rectangular pit (2.10 by 1.30m) cut down in the soft bedrock to a depth of ca. 0.90m, with both long sides walled with field stones, leaving a passage only 0.45m wide in the middle. The narrow space was full of gray earth and clay with no trace of bones or any offerings, although the base of a goblet was embedded in the stones of the north side. The inner part of the grave was revealed when the stone packing along the north side had been removed. The cutting in bedrock was seen to extend well beyond the stones, forming a rectangular cist (1.50 by 2 by 0.90m deep). Along the north side lay a skeleton with head to the northeast, legs slightly flexed at the knees, and hands crossed over the chest.
Aside from the uncanonical form of grave, the greatest interest attaches to the unusual group of offerings which suggest the burial of an artisan with his tools of trade.
Bibliography:   Agora XIII, pp. 231-232, 274, pls. 55, 77, 89 (Grave XXIX).
    Agora XXVII, p. 228.
Chronology:   Mycenaean III A-B
Date:   24 March 1954
Section:   ΣΑ
References:   Publication: Agora XIII
Publication: Agora XXVII
Publication Pages (4)
Image: 2012.54.0135 (LXV-34)
Image: 1997.20.0194 (LXV-34)
Objects (6)