Le trasformazioni del costume funerario ateniese nella necropoli per-soloniana del Kerameikos

Abstract

The Proto-Attic necropolis of the Kerameikos has been described by scholars as an agglomeration of chaotically superimposed burials, closely packed together because of shortage of space. Accordingly, no attempt has been made to reveal the criteria underlying their spatial organization. The author, through a general re-examination of the components of the Proto-Attic burial ritual, shows that the continuous stratification of the funerary infrastructures of this cemetery is a consequence of the very nature of these structures, ephemerous sites of lavish funerary cerimonies, deliberately re-enacted in situ within the individual plots even at a few years' distance. The author also stresses the importance that wine consumption must have had in the course of the funerary rites, on the grounds both of the specific destination of craters as semata and of the presence of the ampelos among the charred material of the pyrai, of the offering trenches and of the offering places. Finally, she indicates the weak points in the interpretation of the built tombs as imitations of oikoi, and suggests instead that they could have had the function of a ritual platform, a sort of altar, in keeping with the marked heroic connotations of these burials (also expressed by their selectiveness, as other scholars have observed, with regard bith to the number and to the sex - mainly male - of the deceased).