Best known for its Classical sanctuary of Artemis, Vravron in eastern Attica, Greece (also known as Brauron in the literature) has been inhabited since Late Neolithic times, and was the site of an important settlement in the second millennium BC. This book by Thanassis Papadoulos and the late Litsa Kontroli-Papadopoulou pieces together information from various excavations, mostly rescue work, conducted between 1893 and 1984 at a cemetery of Late Bronze Age or Mycenaean date. The excavations have brought to light 25 chamber tombs and a small number of cist-graves, pit-graves and graves of undetermined type, at the Lapoutsi hill, to the east of the prehistoric acropolis. These tombs appear to have formed part of a much more extensive burial ground.
Following the brief introduction, there are chapters on the history of the investigation; a catalogue of tombs and their contents; analyses of the architecture, burial customs and finds; and conclusions. A table of concordance provides correlations between artefacts, tombs and plates, albeit with minor errors. The text is supplemented with numerous drawings of artefacts, photographs of all the finds located at the Museum of Vravron and the National Archaeological Museum of Athens, and some plans and sections (although no photographs) of the tombs.
Based on the ceramic evidence, the cemetery seems to have been established during the course of the fifteenth century BC; a couple of pottery vessels may belong to the Late Helladic IIA period (2 & 112), but most of the early material is Late Helladic IIB. A single vessel dating to an earlier stage (Late Helladic I, NM 3859) lacks secure context and cannot be used to date the foundation of the chamber tomb cemetery. Some kylikes (e.g. 7, 22, 340, 399) may also be early, although such forms were produced in burnished ware in Attica until Late Helladic IIIA (Pantelidou Reference Pantelidou1975: 170–71). The cemetery was used most intensively during the fourteenth and thirteenth centuries BC (Late Helladic IIIA--B), and several tombs continued to receive burials in the earlier part of the twelfth century BC (Late Helladic IIIC early). A few ceramic vessels (e.g. 390, 397, NM 3788, NM 3843) suggest that the cemetery continued to be sporadically used until the later part of the twelfth century BC (Late Helladic IIIC middle).
Information about tomb architecture is limited, most probably due to inconsistent recording on the part of different excavators (e.g. full dimensions are given for some tombs but none for others, and not all of them are properly illustrated). Unfortunately, the same is true for burial practices and the skeletal material. In some cases, excavation notes are so brief that even the number of skeletons is omitted. As a result, the estimated number of individuals buried in the excavated part of the cemetery (53 in total) is based on a count of skulls and near-complete skeletons, and thus is probably a serious underestimation of the original figure. Moreover, as no anthropological study had been undertaken, information about the sex and age of the deceased is minimal. Otherwise, burial practices are typical of Mycenaean cemeteries, with the exception of a possible cremation (tomb Verdelis A), which is very uncommon in the Mycenaean world.
In terms of wealth, the Vravron cemetery is unimpressive. Despite the abundance of high-quality ceramics, some of which may have been imported from the Argolid, Euboea, the Cyclades, Rhodes, Crete and elsewhere (pp. 161–62), metal finds are rare: a few bronze weapons and tools, gold and bronze ornaments, and two bronze vessels. (The near-complete absence of silver items is striking given the proximity of Vravron to the silver-rich area of Lavrion.) Ivories are also uncommon, as are sealstones. By contrast, there are numerous glass and faience beads, steatite whorls and dress buttons, that is, items of personal adornment and clothing. Also of interest are a faience scarab dating to the time of Ramesses II (no. Δ 21) and several tinned ceramic vessels with good parallels in other Attic tombs, mostly of Late Helladic IIB and IIIA date (Pantelidou Reference Pantelidou1975: 171–74). The discussion of artefacts is thorough, although no laboratory tests, such as provenancing, have been undertaken, and sometimes the relevant bibliography is not fully up to date.
The authors have made a formidable effort to synthesise the fragmentary information from old excavation notebooks and museum inventories. Their work has made a vast body of material available to scholars, but, at the same time, it has highlighted an inherent problem of rescue archaeology in Greece: the lack of consistency in documentation. Relying on excavation notebooks, rather than on fully standardised recording forms, excavators often fail to document data in a manner that would make them fully recoverable by other researchers. Hence, associations between finds and specific burials are not always clear, and architectural features are not described or illustrated in a uniform way.
This situation deprives us of important information—architecture and burial customs comprise only six pages in this volume—and may encourage art-historical rather than contextual approaches. In this volume, the authors have been largely unable to identify secure assemblages and to date pottery by context; instead, they have relied extensively on stylistic comparisons with Mycenaean pottery from Attica and other regions. This has some unwanted consequences: for example, the chronological distinctions between the Late Helladic IIIB1 and B2, and between the Late Helladic IIIB2 and C1, have been largely based on evidence from the Argolid because no well-stratified deposits of these phases from Attica had been published until recently. Such stylistic dating, however, may impose divisions that are locally invalid; in fact, ongoing research at Alimos-Kontopigado suggests that the Attic ceramic sequence and repertoire in the thirteenth and early twelfth centuries BC differed in several respects from that of the north-east Peloponnese (Kaza-Papageorgiou & Kardamaki Reference Kaza-Papageorgiou and Kardamaki2011: 221–30; Kardamaki 2015).
Notwithstanding these problems, this book is a significant contribution to the prehistoric archaeology of Attica. It adds to what we know from other Late Bronze Age cemeteries (e.g. Athens Agora, Eleusis, Vari-Varkiza, Voula-Alyki, Perati), and shows that, as in many Attic sites, Mycenaean burial practices were introduced relatively late, that is, during the course of the Late Helladic II (Late Helladic IIA or, possibly, Late Helladic IIB). This publication enhances the general impression that the deposition of valuable grave goods in Mycenaean tombs was less significant in Attica than in the Argolid, Messenia or Boeotia. It also proves that Vravron was not abandoned at the end of the thirteenth century BC, as was previously assumed, largely on the basis of the establishment of an extensive cemetery at the neighbouring site of Perati at the end of the Late Helladic IIIB. In this way, Vravron is now beginning to find a place in the study of the political geography of Mycenaean Attica (for a recent overview, see Privitera Reference Privitera2013).
