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The typology and topography of spartan burials from the protogeometric to the hellenistic period: Rethinking spartan exceptionalism and the ostensible cessation of adult intramural burials in the greek world
Abstract
This article makes use of recently published graves to offer the first synthetic analysis of the typology and topography of Spartan burials that is founded on archaeological evidence. Our knowledge of Spartan burial practices has long been based almost entirely on textual sources – excavations conducted in Sparta between 1906 and 1994 uncovered fewer than 20 pre-Roman graves. The absence of pre-Roman cemeteries led scholars to conclude that, as long as the Lycurgan customs were in effect, all burials in Sparta were intracommunal and that few tombs had been found because they had been destroyed by later building activity. Burial practices have, as a result, been seen as one of many ways in which Sparta was an outlier. The aforementioned recently published graves offer a different picture of Spartan burial practices. It is now clear that there was at least one extracommunal cemetery in the Archaic, Classical and Hellenistic periods. What would normally be described as extramural burials did, therefore, take place, but intracommunal burials of adults continued to be made in Sparta throughout the Archaic, Classical and Hellenistic periods. Those burials were concentrated along important roads and on the slopes of hills. The emergent understanding of Spartan burial practices takes on added significance when placed in a wider context. Burial practices in Sparta align closely with those found in Argos and Corinth. Indeed, burial practices in Sparta, rather than being exceptional, are notably similar to those of its most important Peloponnesian neighbours; a key issue is that in all three poleis intracommunal burials continued to take place through the Hellenistic period. The finding that adults were buried both extracommunally and intracommunally in Sparta, Argos and Corinth after the Geometric period calls into question the standard narrative of the development of Greek burial practices in the post-Mycenaean period.
... Cf. Ribeiro (2017: 268), Hawkins (2011: n. 8), Assumpção (2014: 108): "Lacedemônia" não era um Estado e sim um conjunto de territórios unidos pela identidade compartilhada por seus habitantes -ainda que Esparta seja caracterizada como o centro político do conjunto; Christesen (2018Christesen ( : 7, 2021: 1, n. 7) e Ribeiro (2019: 117). bem definida, mas também que a diversidade das pólis-cidade-Estado influenciava o modo como a relação entre centro e periecos acontecia. ...
Pode-se dizer que, desde ao menos a segunda metade do século XIX, a pólis foi a unidade básica de análise da história da Grécia antiga. Entretanto, em muitos casos é evidente que a tentativa de adequar as pólis gregas a cidades-Estado prototípicas do Estado moderno produziu ressonâncias longevas, que até hoje condicionam nossa compreensão das relações sociopolíticas entre vários grupos que compunham as pólis. Portanto, o objetivo desse artigo é demonstrar como as raízes dessa historiografia baseada na pólis condicionaram uma compreensão errônea da relação entre Esparta e as comunidades periecas da Lacônia e Messênia durante o Período Clássico. Isso será feito por meio da comparação dessa relação com aquela mantida por outras pólis com seus respectivos periecos – mais especificamente Élis e as pólis tessálias. Veremos que, ao invés de um Estado unificado e com funcionamentos análogos aos de sua versão moderna, a soma de Esparta e seus vizinhos compunha uma comunidade politicamente muito menos hierárquica e rígida do que se tende a pensar. Isso, por sua vez, nos permite aproximar Esparta de fenômenos análogos contemporâneos a ela, os mesmos que, apesar das respectivas especificidades, ainda apontam para a inexistência de uma pólis-Estado que englobasse cidadãos de uma cidade central e seus periecos.
This article presents contextual evidence for the interpretation of lead isotope analysis (LIA) of artefacts from the Archaic Greek Mediterranean. In particular, I make a response to Wood’s suggestion in Archaeometry (2022, first view, ‘Other ways to examine the finances behind the birth of Classical Greece’) that the end of the production of lead votive figurines in Sparta might have been caused by Athenian restrictions to Laurion lead exports, drawing on new LIA of the Spartan lead votives and wider considerations concerning the trade, cost and volume of lead in the 7th to 5th century bce Mediterranean.
The corpus of carved ivories from the sanctuary of Orthia at Sparta forms one of the most cosmopolitan assemblages from Archaic Laconia. One image within this corpus, however, has remained an anomaly: a mirror-image scene on two plaques showing three figures mourning a deceased male in the prothesis ritual. The puzzling nature of these plaques rests on the dearth of imagery elsewhere in Laconia from this period displaying the prothesis, unlike Attica. These images have been viewed as representing a mythical death or a commemoration of an actual death, tied to a period in Sparta's history when elite groups claimed power through ostentatious ritual, but their overall meaning within Orthia's sanctuary remains obscure. I argue, however, that these plaques are not anomalies within the ivory corpus, nor are they divorced from the broader ritual programme in Orthia's sanctuary – rather, the ivory corpus itself represents a unified composition that merged scenes showing ideal activities for Spartan citizens with heroic episodes from myth, geared towards the achievement of everlasting kléos . The semantics of these combined iconographies are clarified via comparison with cultic implements described in ancient literature alongside extant examples of multi-scene figural pottery from the seventh and sixth centuries. This paper thus highlights the mythological and ideological meanings of the prothesis plaques within the broader ivory corpus, and elucidates the role of complex figural iconographies in the elaboration of heroic ideals centred on Spartan citizens in this period.
Standing archaeological definitions of mortuary space identify it as the location of burials and interments, limiting our capacity to understand broader ‘deathscapes’ within the ancient city. Building upon anthropological and sociological theories of the concept of deathscapes (as opposed to ‘burialscapes’), this paper offers an expanded category of archaeological mortuary space that includes not only interment locations but also mobile and temporary spaces of funerary ritual, performance, and commemoration. Proposed key amendments to the archaeological reconstruction of mortuary landscapes within current models of ancient Greek urban environments are a reconsideration of various temporal scales (including short-lived processes and archaeologically invisible acts), bodily performance, and patterns in remembering and forgetting through funerary behavior. This revised view of mortuary space is applied to select case studies (Athens, Argos, Corinth) in order to take our existing paradigms from the conceived city (i.e., space of planning, logic, cosmological order) to the lived city (i.e., humanistic city of paradoxical, relative, and embodied ontologies).
This paper presents the collections history and typological characteristics of a small collection of Laconian lead figurines from the sanctuary of Artemis Orthia currently held in the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. The collection, which first belonged to Ramsay Traquair, serves as a case study for the applicability of the traditional lead figurine typology to decontextualised artefacts, demonstrating its limitations for assigning precise and accurate dates based on style without the benefit of stratigraphic and contextual evidence. The paper further attests to the value of comprehensively analysing small museum and gallery collections in order to gain more individualised understandings of the figurines within the large Laconian corpus than could be afforded upon excavation. Thus, this study helps to elucidate some of the limitations to the means by which we interpret Laconian material culture as well as to nuance our understanding of Laconian lead figurines by demonstrating the varied capability of the typology and published comparanda in dating and stylistic description.
The number of burials per year known from Athens decreases significantly in the Protogeometric period and then increases rapidly again in the Late Geometric period. The explanation offered for this development by Morris in 1987 is the most popular one so far. This paper will first quickly discuss this and other previous ideas and their wider implications, but then focus on providing a new one. The starting point of this new interpretation is that various types of burial sites may have different recovery rates. I will thus first sketch the different possibilities for the location of graves in Athens in the Early Iron Age and the Archaic period. The subsequent diachronic analysis of these different types of burial sites and their respective popularity forms the core of this contribution. A case study of the Kerameikos and the area of the later Agora as well as an overview of all Athenian sites is provided. These developments and their correspondences in the grave count allow for an interpretation which does account for the variations in the known numbers of graves as well as the changing spatial patterns. This is finally set into the wider field of socio-cultural changes in Early Athens.
The wealth of ancient Hermione is no longer visible: continuous habitation from c. 3000 BC down to the present day has obliterated most traces. Important information on the social organization and economy of Hermione can however be drawn from the tombs that have been unearthed. A large cemetery was discovered in the early 20th century just outside the city gate, stretching along the road leading to ancient Mases and in continuous use for a period of 1,500 years. It covers an area of 1.5 km east–west along the modern Hermione–Kranidi rural road, taking in the terrain to either side to a width of 160 m and extending south to Pron Hill and north to a patch of level ground some 60 m wide. In this article we focus on cemetery finds unearthed in the area south of the present-day Gymnasium-Lykeion school of Hermione, as they typically reflect the urban organization and economic development of the ancient city. These two themes comprise some of the goals pursued in the collaborative research programme between the Ephorate of Antiquities of the Argolid and the Swedish Institute at Athens.
At 9.85 Herodotus states that after the Battle of Plataia, the Lakedaimonians buried their dead in three separate graves: one for the ἱρέες, one for the rest of the Spartiates, and one for helots. Taken together with 9.71, this passage suggests that all of the Spartiates decorated for bravery at Plataia were priests, which seems prima facie improbable. The interpretive challenges presented by 9.85 have been the subject of lively scholarly debate since the eighteenth century because this passage potentially provides important evidence for Spartiates’ funerary, religious, and educational customs. With an eye to facilitating future research, this article offers a detailed conspectus of the extensive collection of relevant scholarship and, in part by drawing upon evidence from the archaeological excavations of the Tomb of the Lakedaimonians in the Kerameikos, identifies one reading, which involves athetizing part of 9.85, as the preferred interpretive approach.
At 9.85 Herodotus states that after the Battle of Plataia, the Lakedaimonians buried their dead in three separate graves: one for the ἱρέες, one for the rest of the Spartiates, and one for helots. Taken together with 9.71, this passage suggests that all of the Spartiates decorated for bravery at Plataia were priests, which seems prima facie improbable. The interpretive challenges presented by 9.85 have been the subject of lively scholarly debate since the eighteenth century because this passage potentially provides important evidence for Spartiates’ funerary, religious, and educational customs. With an eye to facilitating future research, this article offers a detailed conspectus of the extensive collection of relevant scholarship and, in part by drawing upon evidence from the archaeological excavations of the Tomb of the Lakedaimonians in the Kerameikos, identifies one reading, which involves athetizing part of 9.85, as the preferred interpretive approach.
The aim of this book is to provide a systematic examination of a crucial aspect of classical Sparta, her system of property, and to analyse the role of private wealth within her society. The volume falls into four parts. In Part I, Spartan perceptions, I shall outline certain misleading but highly influential images of Sparta's property system and attitudes to wealth which have prevailed since ancient times. Chapter I will sketch the prevalence of perceptions of Sparta as an economically egalitarian society in the works of key modern thinkers from the 16th to the 18th centuries - perceptions which have formed an influential backdrop to historical scholarship on Sparta during the last 200 years. Chapter 2 examines the creation and development of these images in antiquity under the influence of what is commonly known as the `Spartan mirage': that is, `the partly distorted, partly invented, image created by and for non-Spartans (with not a little help from their Spartan friends) of what Sparta ideally represented' (Cartledge 1987, 118).
Part II, The anatomy of the Spartiate property system, attempts to uncover the `reality' obscured by these `Spartan perceptions', focusing on the balance between private and public elements in Spartan property-holding. Chapter 3 analyses the nature of landownership and inheritance, emphasising - contrary to the pervasive images of egalitarian state control - the predominantly private character of land tenure. Chapter 4 examines the Spartiates' control over the servile helot population, focusing upon their relationship as landowners and cultivators, and the character and geographical extent of Spartiate agricultural exploitation of Lakonia and Messenia. Chapter 5 discusses private ownership and use of non-landed property, especially the controversial questions of Sparta's iron currency, the use of foreign coinage and the role of monetary wealth. Finally, Chapter 6 examines certain public limitations on private property ownership, placing them in a broader historical perspective.
Part III, Rich citizens and the use of private wealth, analyses the extent to which rich citizens were able to make use of their private resources and the impact of those uses upon Spartiate society. Chapter 7 considers certain restrictions upon the deployment of private wealth in Spartan life; Chapter 8 similar restrictions on burials and funerary practice. Chapter 9 investigates the sphere of religious dedications, assessing the degree to which it was marked by restrictions on the use of wealth or by its deployment for prestige displays. Chapters 10 and 11 discuss two particular spheres in which rich citizens were able to employ their surplus wealth with potentially significant socio-political consequences: through horse-rearing and engagement in equestrian contests, and through the establishment of personal and political relations of patronage and clientism at home and abroad. My overall thesis is that, despite manifold restrictions, their deployment of private wealth created a significant gulf between wealthy Spartiates and their poorer fellow citizens.
Part IV, Property and the Spartan crisis, pursues this point in examining the contribution of inequalities in wealth to the crisis of Spartiate society. Chapter 12 attempts the difficult task of quantifying the economic viability of `ordinary' citizen households, suggesting that their productive capacity would normally have been sufficient to meet their material demands, as long as the distribution of land remained only moderately unequal. Finally, Chapter 13 analyses the growth of excessive property concentration and the impoverishment of citizen households during the fifth and early fourth centuries. It also examines the impact of these developments on the crisis of Spartiate society, focusing especially on the growth of a plutocratic society, in which the dominance of wealthy citizens undermined the classical Spartan social order.
In the archaic period the archaeology of the city of Sparta is still very much one of cult sites and funerary monuments. The modest size of the early Laconian temples seems just as characteristic of classical monuments in the region. Mycenaean power in Laconia and Messenia was brought low at the end of Late Helladic IIIB, roughly 1200 BC. Given the ancient tradition that the first Messenian war happened before 700 BC, it has been suggested by modern scholars that the abandonment of sites such as Nichoria in the middle of the eighth century was the result of aggression. Sparta in the tenth to ninth centuries BC may have looked something like Nichoria, first the wide distribution of the finds and second the indications that cult was already carried out at major sanctuaries, marking Sparta's proto-urban status.
A Brief History of Skeleton StudyHow Do We Study Skeletons and What Can They Tell Us?Conclusions
Recommended Further Reading
As appears from a wide survey of more than 6000 Iron Age graves in the Greek world, burial practices in the Peloponnese are very similar to those in Akarnania, Aitolia and Lokris. Comparison of the map of burial types based on the above with the dialect map affords surprising and unexpected results. The striking difference between the practices in the Peloponnese and those described by Homer should be noted. The role of burials in signalling ethnic identity will also be discussed. Specifically, the question raised here is whether the graves of this period can be interpreted as ‘geo-symbols’ as defined by the geographer Joël Bonnemaison in ‘Voyage autour du patrimoine’ Espace géographique 4 (1981) 249-62.
This is the first full and up-to-date survey of Aegean archaeology at the beginning of the Iron Age (late eleventh and tenth centuries BC) since Snodgrass’s classic The Dark Age of Greece (1971). These crucial 150 years in the development of ancient Greek society are known as the Protogeometric period after the characteristic pottery which was commonly in use in the Aegean. The book offers a detailed account of old and new discoveries with chapters on pottery, metal finds, burial customs, and architectural remains (and how to use them to understand the social and political structure of the society). This analysis of the material culture of the period covers not only well-known sites such as Athens and Lefkandi but also other, less familiar, regions, many of which are discussed in English for the first time. In addition, Dr Lemos examines a number of specific issues such as relative and absolute chronology, the introduction of iron technology in the Aegean, and the use of handmade pottery and jewellery. The archaeological record is also used to suggest interpretations of the social and political structure of the society, cult practices, and the use of Homer in understanding the period. The book challenges the description of the period from the collapse of the Mycenean palace system to the formation of early Greek city-states as the ‘Dark Age of Greece’. Dr Lemos argues that some of the advances on socio-economic structures towards the formation of states, which were thought to belong to the eighth century BC, might have started to develop much earlier, in the course of the tenth century.
Modern archaeology has amassed considerable evidence for the disposal of the dead through burials, cemeteries and other monuments. Drawing on this body of evidence, this book offers fresh insight into how early human societies conceived of death and the afterlife. The twenty-seven essays in this volume consider the rituals and responses to death in prehistoric societies across the world, from eastern Asia through Europe to the Americas, and from the very earliest times before developed religious beliefs offered scriptural answers to these questions. Compiled and written by leading prehistorians and archaeologists, this volume traces the emergence of death as a concept in early times, as well as a contributing factor to the formation of communities and social hierarchies, and sometimes the creation of divinities.
Première partie : la nature des établissements périèques. L’examen d’une série d’indices montre que, si certains n’étaient probablement que des komai (soit de Sparte, soit de cités périèques), la plupart de ceux que nous connaissons avaient le statut de cités. Cela est confirmé par la façon dont les textes les présentent quand ils les considèrent dans leur ensemble. Deuxième partie : nature et limites de la dépendance des cités périèques.
Dans le domaine militaire, elles dépendent entièrement de Sparte ; mais cela n’empêche pas certaines d’entre elles d’avoir des relations avec des cités de l’extérieur, comme le montre la présence en leur sein de proxènes. Les relations particulières qu’elles ont avec les rois de Sparte ne doivent pas être conçues comme des relations de dépendance. Ce qui, à nos yeux comme à ceux des Anciens, marque le plus clairement cette dépendance, c’est la faculté qu’avaient les autorités de Sparte, essentiellement les éphores, d’intervenir, quand elles le jugeaient nécessaire, dans leurs affaires intérieures. Troisième partie : l’ensemble lacédémonien. Contrairement à l’opinion courante, il n’existait pas de «cité de Lacédémone» , dont les Périèques auraient été des membres passifs, privés de tout droit politique. Ce qui existait, c’était un ensemble, aux racines à la fois ethniques, culturelles et historiques, de cités dont ils étaient pleinement les citoyens, même si elles étaient liées à Sparte par une association inégalitaire qui les privait d’une part importante de leur souveraineté.
The deme of Acharnai belonged to the Oineis tribe and was the largest deme in Attica, represented in the boule by 22 bouleutai (Trail 1975: 65; Osborne 1985: 44; Platonos 2013: 137). Acharnai not only had a larger population than the other Attic demes, but it also appears to have extended over a particularly large area: over Neapoli , Agios Athanasios , the centre of modern Menidi, Lathea , Auliza , Pyrgouthi , Agia Anna, Charaugi , Kokkinos Mylos , Agia Soteira, Loutro , part of Gerovouno and possibly northern Lykotrypa ( Fig. 125 ).
Both Maria Platonos (2013: 139; 2004: 31–32) and Danielle Kellogg (2013: 10–26), who have studied this deme in depth, agree that there would have been more than one settlement within its limits. Kellogg (2013: 32–33) also notes that the settlement pattern in most areas would have been scattered: that is, there would have been numerous farmsteads dotted across the landscape. This is a very attractive suggestion, since Acharnai was known for its fertile fields, and it is supported by the archaeological evidence, since numerous Classical walls delimiting properties have been excavated in the broader area of the SKA Rail Centre ( ID4852 ; Platonos 2004: 430).
“Heroic Offerings sheds light on the study of religion in Sparta, one of Greece's most powerful city-states and the long-term rival of Athens. Sparta's history is well known, but its archaeology has been much less satisfactorily explored. Through the comprehensive study of a distinctive class of terracotta votive offerings from a specific sanctuary, Gina Salapata explores both coroplastic art and regional religion. By integrating archaeological, historical, literary, and epigraphic sources, she provides important insights into the heroic cults of Lakonia and contributes to an understanding of the political and social functions of local ritual practice.This volume focuses on a large group of decorated terracotta plaques, from the sixth to fourth centuries BCE. These molded plaques were discovered with other offerings in a sanctuary deposit excavated near Sparta more than fifty years ago, but they have remained unpublished until now. They number over 1,500 complete and fragmentary pieces. In technique, style, and iconography they form a homogeneous group unlike any other from mainland Greece. The large number of plaques and variety of types reveal a stable and vigorous coroplastic tradition in Lakonia during the late Archaic and Classical period. Heroic Offerings will be of interest to students and scholars of Greek history, art, and archaeology, to those interested in ancient religious practice in the Mediterranean, and to all inspired by Athens' chief political rival, Sparta. This volume received financial support from the Archaeological Institute of America”.
The ancient deme of Aixone coincides with the area of the modern Athenian suburb of Glyphada. An extensive, comprehensive study on this deme was published in 1990 by Eleni Konsolaki-Giannopoulou. Since then, new excavation data have come to light which support the conclusions of this study and provide us with even greater insights into the life of the deme. Another monograph on Aixone will be published by Delphine Ackermann in 2017, entitled Une microhistoire d’Athènes. Le dème d’Aixônè dans l’Antiquité .
Aixone, along with neighbouring Halai Aixonidai, belonged to the Kekropis tribe. In Classical and Hellenistic times the settlement extended from the west of Pirnari to the east of modern Leoforos Dimarchou Aggelou Metaxa, thus coinciding for the large part with the area of modern Glyphada. The deme centre lay near the Church of Agios Nikolaos, west of modern Vouliagmenis Avenue (Eliot 1962: 21). To the east of the settlement lay the deme's agricultural lands and to the west the port, salt lake and the salt pits.
Attic mortuary practices of the last three decades of the eighth century B.C.E. (Late Geometric [LG] II) are principally marked by the dominance for adults of inhumation over cremation. Nevertheless, this transformation was not universally applied at all burial sites in Attica. Instead, funerary rites present a high degree of variability unprecedented in earlier periods. The Late Geometric burial record has been considered in certain quarters to be a reflection of the changes in contemporary social structures affected by the emergence of the polis. The collection and study of all LG II funerary evidence, not only that from Athens or the well-excavated and published necropoleis of Attica, lead to several interesting observations that demand a reconsideration of the attested funerary variability and the proposed interpretations. The treatment of the deceased seems to have largely depended on their age, with all age groups represented in the organized necropoleis. Thus, the discerned horizontal dimension of the mortuary rites needs to be addressed within the framework of contemporary Attic social developments.
The seventh century B.C. saw a number of changes in Attic mortuary practices with the emergence of the offering trenches being one of the most characteristic. The earliest examples came to light in the late nineteenth century in association with a number of tumuli in the Attic countryside, although the cemetery of Kerameikos revealed the richest evidence, which has been thoroughly published and studied. The trenches contained good quantities of Protoattic and early black-figure pottery, which formed the focus of the early scholarship because of its importance for the study of the Attic vase painting. Nevertheless, during the last two decades, offering trenches have been employed by a number of scholars as a medium for approaching early Archaic Attic society during a period of special interest, which coincides with the early development of the polis. The offering trenches serve as a case study for showing the shift in archaeological research on early Attica with scholarly interest moving from the finds to their archaeological context, and focusing on the importance of funerary practices for the study of contemporary society. Moreover, the present contribution reassembles all the known trench-evidence from Attica, while re-examining their funerary and social implications for the contemporary polis.
Arnold van Gennep’s The Rites of Passage (1909; English trans. 1960) has had a profound impact on how we understand the nature of the “life cycle” and its rites de passage – each of which consists (to varying extents) of stages of separation, transition, and (re)incorporation. The life cycle, particularly in a community-oriented culture such as Archaic Greece, cannot be examined merely at the level of the individual; it must also be considered from the perspective of the individual vis-à-vis both household and society. In this chapter, I will examine the Archaic Greek rites of birth, initiation, marriage, and death in light of van Gennep’s schema and attempt to ascertain the ways in which the Greeks negotiated these potentially anxiety-producing passages. Rites of passage are considerably better attested in the Classical period than in the Archaic, but the fragments available to us – literary, archaeological, and iconographic – allow us to see that many of the “Classical” life-cycle rituals are in fact rooted in Archaic practice. Stages of Life Before we address the specifics of the Archaic Greek rites of passage, we should examine the ways in which the life cycle was divided. Not surprisingly, there were a number of ways to classify the stages of life. © Cambridge University Press 2007 and Cambridge University Press, 2009.
The Sanctuary of Hera on the eastern limits of the Argive Plain has, in recent years, figured prominently in accounts seeking to describe the process of Greek state formation. There has been a general consensus that the establishment of the sanctuary in the Geometric period served to delimit the territory of the nascent city of Argos and to establish Argive domination over the Plain, to the detriment of the neighboring communities of Mycenae and Tiryns. This article reexamines the evidence for the Heraion and its position within the Argive Plain from an explicitly interdisciplinary point of view, drawing on archaeological, historical, linguistic, and mythological data. It attempts to demonstrate that the territory of Argos was not coterminous with the entire Argive Plain in the eighth century B. C.; that there were distinct cultural differences between the eastern and western sides of the Plain; that the Heraion is accommodated more easily within the religious and cultural traditions of the eastern Plain; and finally, that there was no major change in this state of affairs until the mid-fifth century B. C.
In this article the author publishes a Corinthian funerary inscription from the late 5th or early 4th century B.C. The stone's primary importance lies in its physical characteristics, which imply that it and other similar examples, usually interpreted as sarcophagus lids, are instead horizontal grave markers of the trapeza or mensa type; this class now represents the most common form of grave monument in pre-Roman Corinth. Secondly, given the presence of a base molding datable on stylistic grounds, this stone provides an isolated example of a pre-Roman Corinthian inscription that can be dated by criteria other than letter forms.
This article describes the forms and contents of three Geometric graves excavated at Corinth from 2001 to 2004. The two earliest graves date to the Early Geometric period and contain monolithic sarcophagi that are among the earliest known at Corinth. One of these graves and an adjacent pit grave dating to the Middle Geometric I period were provided with special niches for grave goods. A nearby child's grave, which may be Geometric as well, is also described. The impact of stone sarcophagi on the development of the Corinthian stoneworking industry is considered in an appendix. Stray Early Iron Age finds from the area are listed in a second appendix.