This weekend our class traveled to the Peloponnese, stopping at sites that included Mycenae, Tiryns, Pylos, Olympia and Nemea. At Pylos we had the pleasure of hearing from Shari Stocker, who gave us a tour of a tholos tomb and some recent excavations (unfortunately, we were unable to take photos of the recent/current excavations because they have not yet been published).
As outlined in my blog post from week 2, a tholos tomb is a monument in the landscape that consists of an entryway (dromos), stomion (doorway, which was filled in except during burials), and the actual chamber (tholos). This week we learned more about the architecture of the doorway, which consists of a lintel stone placed across two stones; because of the immense weight of the stones stacked to create the dome above, many tholos tombs also had relieving triangles, an architectural feature whose purpose is to channel the weight onto the vertical posts rather than the horizontal lintel.
In the Tholos tomb at Pylos, we saw that the dromos was unlined, leaving the crumbling dirt exposed up until the tomb itself. The local bedrock is solid clay, meaning that all stones used to build the tomb were brought from quarries at least a couple of kilometers away, demonstrating a big investment in labor (on top of the labor-intensive process of opening and closing the tomb during burials).
Shari pointed out how tholos tombs are an example of how families with great power (probably royal) invested in death rather than the realm of the living, a theme we have touched on at other points during this class and in our Myth & Reception class as well. At Olympia, for example, Sam shared how kleos (glory, honor, renown) gained in victory stayed with athletes and their families’ names long after they had died. During a visit to Eleusis for our Myth class, we discussed how ancient Greeks came to terms with death through a ritual experience (Demeter’s Eleusinian Mysteries) that would give them a better afterlife. Though different, both examples showed how ancient Greeks conceptualized their relationship with death, what lay beyond the mortal realm, and how certain things accomplished in life (i.e. a victory at the Olympic games or participation in a ritual) could affect them in death.
In addition to this focus on investing in death rather than life, we also talked about how during this period, children did not inherit their parents’ wealth. This meant that each individuals’ status and wealth was accrued solely from what they accomplished during their lifetime (‘earned’ rather than ‘inherited’ status), all of which was buried with them when they died.