Agora Deposit: C 11:2
Title:   Pit tomb, inhumation
Supervisor:   Rodney S. Young
Category:   Burial
Description:   Grave 20 (E.L. Smithson: Grave X: PG). Bones discarded. Pit tomb, inhumation (on bier or in coffin?), perhaps of a child. Little ash and carbon in the filling, but the grave offerings were unburned.
JP
Deep rectangular pit, 1.72m long and 0.70m wide, cut into bedrock to a depth of 0.83m, oriented east-southeast to west-northwest. the skeleton at the bottom of the pit had mostly disintegrated, except for a shin bone in the eastern half of the tomb. This suggested that the deceased was probably oriented with the head to the west. No trace of formal tomb covering.
3 distinct strata of the fill:
a) Upper half, to a depth of 0.40m, redeposited bedrock chips mixed with earth. Sterile.
b) To a depth of 0.12-0.15m, : "ash and cinders with a few burned bits of nonhuman/animal bones. It was in this layer that five of the six pots associated with the grave were encountered, toward the SE corner. The se pots, all unburned and clustered together, would have been placed in the area immediately above the feet of the deceased.
c) in the lowest 0.30m, very damp earth with very little ash, much heavy black matter "of a different character", from that in the layer above.
The small finds associated with the tomb suggest a child, whereas the size of the tomb pit indicates an adult. The strong likelihood of a wooden bier or coffin swayed Smithson in favor of a child inhumation.
Notes:   Negs. X-43, X-44
Bibliography:   Hesperia 6 (1937), p. 368 "Six vases were secured from an adult's grave...crosshatching and checkerboard pattern" (JP)
    Agora XXXVI, Tomb 43, pp. 307-313, figs. 2.209:a, 2.212-2.215, pl. II.
Chronology:   Developed Protogeometric
Date:   18 March 1936
Section:   ΠΘ
Grid:   ΠΘ:38-39/ΜΑ-ΜΒ
References:   Publication: Agora XXXVI
Publication: Hesperia 6 (1937)
Images (8)
Objects (6)