This volume contains 24 papers presented at a two-day conference held in Athens in 2015 with the aim of revealing, discussing and contextualising the extraordinary, albeit preliminary, results of the excavations conducted at the site of the cemetery by Tsipopoulou in 2005–6 and more systematically from 2009 onwards. The formula of the symposium, already successfully trialled for the excavations carried out in the settlement (M. Tsipopoulou [ed.], Petras, Siteia. 25 Years of Excavations and Studies [2012]), means that the new data (presented in the first sixteen papers) are contrasted with the results achieved by researchers working in other parts of the island, mainly in the east and the south of Crete. The 24 presentations are concluded by a final discussion (chaired by C. Macdonald) and by general remarks (by D. Haggis), which further highlight the potential of the cemetery to address not only issues pertaining specifically to the funerary sphere (funerary ritual and treatment of the body) and to the social organisation of the people who used it in the Pre- and Proto-palatial periods, but also topics such as regionalism, cultural heterogeneity and human mobility.
Tsipopoulou's opening paper introduces the cemetery in its overall spatial organisation and its single components (a rock shelter, thirteen house tombs, many corridors and two ceremonial areas), and provides important insights into its use and development through time, but also on the social organisation of the people who used it. From a diachronic perspective the available data show that the cemetery was established in EM II, but was re-organised in EM III so profoundly as to suggest that the local community might have experienced an important change, social and administrative, in that period. By contrast, the beginning of the Proto-palatial period, which starts in MM IIA at this site, does not seem to be marked by major changes, and in fact it seems to develop the asset that had been established at the beginning of MM IB, if not earlier. From a synchronic perspective, instead, the relatively low number of tombs in use in each period, coupled with the absence of tombs of ‘lower social status’, led the excavator to suggest that the cemetery served only a particular section of the population, the elite, and documented a heterarchical model of social organisation, rather than a hierarchical one.
Issues of social organisation are at the core of the second and third papers, which also attempt to reconstruct the ritual practices performed in the cemetery. The second paper, by P. Betancourt, Tsipopoulou and M. Clinton, focuses on Ceremonial Area 1 and interprets the early presence of a tripartite facade as a sign that people buried in House Tomb 2 belonged to the elite. Moreover, building on the architectural features of House Tomb 2, and more specifically on the fact that its two courts had a different degree of connection with the deceased, it argues that the cemetery hosted two types of rituals: one specifically funerary in nature, restricted to a small number of participants; the other one of commemorative nature extended to a much larger group of people.
The third paper, by Tsipopoulou, focuses on the identity of the people who participated in the rituals performed in Ceremonial Area 1, but does not seek to provide a definitive answer. It rather intends to underline what can be ascertained by comparing the assemblages used in the two ceremonial areas, which were different in terms of size and accessibility but were used for rituals that were similarly concluded with the ritual killing and the in situ discard of the pottery used, which could be dated to MM IB–IIA.
The assemblages found in Ceremonial Area 1 and House Tomb 2 are the subject of the fourth paper, by E. Nodarou, and of the sixth paper, by M. Relaki and C. Tsoraki. Nodarou uses the pottery to reintroduce the topic of continuity and discontinuity at the transition from Pre-palatial to Proto-palatial and argues that the big shift took place at the beginning of the late Pre-palatial period, when grog-tempered and calcite-tempered traditions gave way to naturally tempered fabrics: no major changes are recorded between the late Pre-palatial and Proto-palatial periods. Relaki and Tsoraki deal with stone vases and, by focusing on the deposition patterns, try to ascertain whether and to what extent the specimens found in the house tombs and those found in the ceremonial area had been involved in different practices.
The fifth paper, by O. Krzyszkowska, presents 20 seals found between 2010 and 2014, which enrich the glyptic repertoire for east Crete with two hunting scenes, which are virtually unparalleled and stylistically unique, but do not equal the masterpieces found in the previous campaigns.
Other aspects of the ritual practices performed in the cemeteries are explored in the seventh paper, by A. Simandiraki, in which it is argued that the multifaceted hybridity of the sphinx might have been specifically connected with the ‘in-between world’, and in the eighth paper, by H. Dierckx, in which it is suggested that, while some stone querns were introduced in the cemetery as part of the burial practices so as to be used as pillows, others were instead introduced as part of the burial kit of the deceased.
The ninth and tenth papers address two particular categories of metal objects. A. Giumlia-Mair et al. highlight the advanced technological skills of the Petras metal workshops, especially with regard to some special alloys in silver; T. Brogan and Giumlia-Mair propose that twelve small bronze discs were symbolic balances, probably alluding to the action of weighing the soul in the afterlife.
The volume continues with two papers that explore the practices performed in the cemetery from a bioarchaeological perspective. E. Margaritis sheds new light on the use of fire during burial practices, showing that plants were purposely charred so as to be preserved and dedicated as mnemonic signifiers, connecting the dead with everyday life. V. Isaakidou focuses on zooarchaeological data and argues that meat was only scantly consumed during funerary feasting, confirming the picture from other Pre-palatial and Proto-palatial cemeteries of Crete.
There follows a series of papers that explore other aspects of the ritual activity performed in the cemetery. D. Rupp describes the structures built on Hill II in LM IIIA2–IIIC and persuasively argues that the re-occupation of the hill is connected with a veneration of ancestors buried in the Pre- and Proto-palatial cemetery. The other two, following an abstract by T. Theodoropoulou that outlines the potential of the data gathered from the study of seashells for exploring the connection between the marine world and the afterlife, pertain to funerary practices, as understood from the analysis of the skeletal remains from House Tomb 2 and House Tomb 5. The first, by S. Triantaphyllou, represents a milestone in Minoan mortuary practice studies. Triantaphyllou argues, on the basis of solid archaeological data, that the manipulation of the bodies of the deceased took place through a multi-stage process involving deliberate fragmentation of the skeletal remains and the use of fire. The second, by Triantaphyllou et al., provides further analytical evidence for a multi-stage funerary ritual that involved constant contact with the bodies of the deceased, during various stages of their decomposition, and provides some important, albeit preliminary, information on health patterns of the population buried in House Tomb 5.
In the second part of the volume specific issues raised by the Petras cemetery are discussed using other sites and/or regions as reference points. G. Cadogan shows that the Myrtos-Pyrgos cemetery was also re-organised at the beginning of the Late Pre-palatial period and continued without major changes throughout the Proto-palatial period. Y. Papadatos offers a thorough overview of the funerary evidence of the Petras region and notes that the decrease in diversity of mortuary practices that characterised the region during the early Pre-palatial period might mirror the new leading role of Petras that from the late Pre-palatial period was the site of a palace of Minoan type. The paper by E. Nikita et al. raises the issue of how to interpret this mortuary diversity and, based on the preliminary results of dental analysis, proposes that some biological similarities between the Livari and Moni Odighitria teeth assemblages (table 4, p. 331) may hint at human mobility from the Mesara to east Crete.
The two papers on the tombs of Pezoules Zakros Kephala by L. Platon and by L. Platon and M. Tsiboukaki suggest slightly different mortuary habits and show that Proto-palatial pottery from Zakros has a different formal and decorative repertoire, which is particularly surprising in contrast to the numerous parallels identified between Petras and Palaikastro.
I. Schoep et al. offer a strong comparison between the mortuary practices followed at Petras and those attested in the cemetery at Sissi that, having also been excavated by a team of archaeologists and anthropologists, have allowed many stages in the process of the manipulation of the body of the deceased to be distinguished. In this context it is also proposed that the use of the term ‘secondary’ should only be used to describe the removal of skeletal remains from the burial ground to a different context.
This second part is closed by two interpretative papers: G. Vavouranakis focuses on the social structure of the community, with particular regard to the interplay between the individual and the collective; C. Knappett and C. Ichim examine cultural relationships in east Crete assessed through network analysis, from which it emerges that Petras in MM IIA focused inland rather than on the coast.
The two concluding papers, by Macdonald (‘Final discussion’) and Haggis (‘Final remarks’), together with the discussion at the end of most papers, give the perfect measure of the great value of the volume, the ultimate aim of which was not to provide a complete and updated list of comparisons with other contemporary sites, but rather to share immediately the results of important multidisciplinary research with the scientific community.
