The Protogeometric period

We begin with the Protogeometric period. Insofar as the Protogeometric and Geometric periods are defined largely on the basis of local pottery styles, and in view of the fact that the Lakonian pottery sequence does not align precisely with the much better-known sequence from Athens, Table 1 supplies the dates of each of the periods employed in the discussion that follows (see below for relevant bibliography and further discussion).

Table 1.

Chronological periods in Sparta.

There are 12 Protogeometric graves from Sparta itself and a further 12 in Amyklai (see the supplementary material, Appendix 1, for the details). The tombs from Sparta come from eight distinct locations (Fig. 5),Footnote ²² whereas the tombs from Amyklai comprise a small cemetery located on the periphery of a settlement. The numerical breakdown of tomb types is given in Table 2.

Fig. 5.

Locations of Protogeometric burials in Sparta.

Table 2.

Tomb types of Protogeometric burials in Sparta and Amyklai.

In all of the cases where a determination can be made (18 out of 24 graves), the corpse was inhumed; there is no evidence for cremation. With one exception, all of the burials contain a single individual; Tomb 2 in Amyklai contains two skeletons. In 12 of the 24 graves the skeletons are sufficiently well preserved to show the disposition of remains, and in all 12 instances the corpse was buried in a contracted position. Insufficient information is provided in the relevant reports to say anything meaningful about the orientation either of graves or of corpses within graves.

Five of the 12 graves in Sparta contained sub-adults; no information is provided about the age of the occupants of the other seven graves (and no information is provided about cist/pit length so as to permit a determination of age by that means). Four of the 12 graves in Amyklai contained sub-adults; no information is provided about the age of the occupants of the other eight graves (and no information is provided about cist/pit length so as to permit a determination of age by that means). The nine graves that clearly contained sub-adults consist of six cists, one pit, one pot and one pithos fragments.

Eight of the 12 graves in Sparta contained grave-goods of some kind and three were without grave-goods; the contents of one grave were not reported. Precisely the same numbers apply to the graves in Amyklai. Grave-goods consist largely of pottery, bronze jewellery and iron pins; one of the graves at Amyklai contained a single bead of rock crystal, and a gold spiral and gold beads were found in two other graves at that site. There is no obvious correlation between the age of the individual interred and the presence/absence or quantity of grave-goods. No grave-markers were found, but two of the pit graves at Amyklai were delimited by a line of stones, situated at the contemporary ground level, on one or more sides. Pottery that was probably used in funerary rituals was found next to two of the graves from Amyklai (an oinochoe and drinking vessel outside Tomb 14 and an oinochoe outside Tomb 15).

The Geometric period

There are 22 graves from Sparta and Amyklai that can be definitely or probably dated to the Geometric period; these graves are scattered across more than a dozen different locations (Fig. 6 and see the supplementary material, Appendix 2, for the details).Footnote ²³ The numerical breakdown of tomb types is given in Table 3.

Fig. 6.

Locations of Geometric burials in Sparta.

Table 3.

Tomb types of Geometric burials in Sparta.

In all of the ten cases where a determination was possible and put into print, the corpse was inhumed, and it seems probable that all of the cist and pit burials were inhumations. The situation with the pithos burials is rather more complicated. There are no significant extant skeletal remains present in any of the seven pithos burials; the British excavators of the early part of the twentieth century, who uncovered two of these pithos burials, believed that they were cremations, and that opinion has been repeated by some later scholars (Bosanquet Reference Bosanquet1905–6, 281–2, pl. VIII:1; Hodkinson Reference Hodkinson2000, 239). On the other hand, there is no published mention of traces of burning on either (the exiguous) osteological remains or grave-goods, and the recent Greek excavators have tended to see the pithos burials as inhumations (Themos and Zavvou Reference Themos, Zavvou, Guimier-Sorbets and Morizot2010, 229). Published reports provide information about the disposition of remains in eight instances, with all eight buried in a contracted position. There is no evidence for multiple burials in any of the graves; insufficient information is provided in the relevant reports to say anything meaningful about the orientation either of graves or of corpses within graves.

The published reports about these 22 graves offer little information about age or sex. One grave (a cist tomb from BB 148) is identified as that of an adult and another (a cist tomb from Amyklai) as that of a sub-adult. Three further graves (two pithoi and one cist) are identified as those of infants based on the absence of bones. One of the pithos burials is identified as that of a male (BB 99) and another as female (BB 125), based on the nature of the grave-goods found with those burials.

Twelve of the 22 burials included grave-goods of some kind, five are described as not having any grave-goods and no information is provided about the remaining five. There may be some association between the presence/absence of grave-goods and tomb type: five of the six cists and five of the seven pithos burials contained grave-goods, whereas just one of the five pits had grave-goods. Grave-goods, as in the Protogeometric period, consist largely of pottery, bronze jewellery and iron pins. Two burials, both in pithoi, stand out in this regard. One (in BB 99) contained an iron sword, three iron knives and a collection of bronze jewellery. Another (in BB 125) contained a large collection of bronze jewellery including at least six rings. Two of the pits and one cist were delimited by small stones, situated at the contemporary ground level, on one or more sides.

The earliest traces of activity in the area of the Olive Oil Cemetery in the south-western part of the city, in the form of pottery finds, date to the Geometric period, but the earliest extant burials in this cemetery date to the Archaic period (Tsouli Reference Tsouli and Sporn2013, 157). As a result, it is impossible to know if this cemetery, in which earlier burials were regularly destroyed to make space for new ones (see below), was used for burials in the Geometric period.

The Archaic period

The earliest extant burial in the Olive Oil Cemetery in the south-western part of the city took place in the Archaic period, but very few Archaic graves from this cemetery survive intact due to the construction of later tombs. The preliminary excavation report for the Olive Oil Cemetery provides details for just one Archaic burial, Tomb 21, which contained a single black-glazed lakaina that dates to the middle of the sixth century (Tsouli Reference Tsouli and Sporn2013, 157). As a result, detailed discussion of the Olive Oil Cemetery is supplied in the following section.

Before proceeding to discuss the Archaic burials, it is important to note the existence of a particularly problematic cluster of four inhumations in cist graves that was found in 1960 just to the south of Palaiokastro hill. These graves were distributed around a relief amphora and were situated next to a kiln. A stone plaque covering one of the graves extended over one of the handles of the amphora, so the amphora was probably put in place when the graves were built. The mouth of the amphora, which had been laid on its side when it was put in place among the graves, was sealed with a stone slab, but nothing was found inside, so it was not likely functioning as a burial container.Footnote ²⁴

The excavator, Chrysanthos Christou, dates the graves to the end of the seventh century and draws a number of conclusions based on the nature of the burials and the date he assigns to them. He argues that the presence of the relief amphora shows that such vessels were used as grave-markers, much like the Dipylon vases from Athens. (None of the other relief amphorae found in Sparta before or since was closely associated with a burial; see the supplementary material, Appendix 8, for further discussion.) He also argues that the placement of the burial next to a kiln shows that the graves belonged to a family that owned and operated a pottery workshop. Insofar as the burials were located in the heart of Sparta, Christou concludes that the deceased must have been Spartiates, which in turn shows that Spartiates – contrary to the claims of Xenophon (Oeconomicus 4.2.3), Aristotle (Politics 1278a8–2) and Plutarch (Lycurgus 24.2; Agesilaus 26.4–5; Moralia 213f–14a) – were not in fact banned from productive activity (Christou Reference Christou1964b, 144–63).

It is not difficult to see why these burials received a considerable amount of attention when they were discovered and continue to be the subject of discussion.Footnote ²⁵ There is, however, good reason to believe that Christou erred badly in dating the graves, which should be placed not in the Archaic but in the Byzantine period. The reasons why that is the case are discussed in detail in the supplementary material, Appendix 7.

There are approximately 31 graves from Sparta that can be definitely or probably dated to the Archaic period. The uncertainty springs from the publication of two separate grave groups, one in BB 53 containing eight cist graves of Archaic and Classical date (Maltezou Reference Maltezou2011d) and another in BB 58 containing 24 graves of Archaic to Roman date, without any specific breakdown of how many tombs belong to each period (Maltezou Reference Maltezou2010a).Footnote ²⁶ For cataloguing purposes, four of the eight graves in BB 53 and four of the 24 graves in BB 58 are assumed to be of Archaic date.

Based on these assumptions, there are 31 tombs of Archaic date (Fig. 7 and see the supplementary material, Appendix 3, for further details), which come from across Sparta.Footnote ²⁷ The numerical breakdown of tomb types is given in Table 4.

Fig. 7.

Locations of Archaic intracommunal burials in Sparta.

Table 4.

Tomb types of Archaic burials in Sparta.

Tile graves appear for the first time in this period, as does the first two-level built tomb. Tombs of the latter type became relatively common in Sparta in the Hellenistic period, and although only minimal details of the single known Archaic example have been published and the tomb in question is now backfilled, the excavator explicitly compares it to Hellenistic examples excavated by the British in 1907 in BB 124 (Wace and Dickins Reference Wace and Dickins1906–07; Raftopoulou Reference Raftopoulou, Cavanagh and Walker1998, 134–6). It is, therefore, possible to give some sense of the basic design.

The Archaic tomb was built into the northern slopes of Gerokomeiou hill (BB 117A), which is located just south of Palaiokastro hill (Fig. 1) (Raftopoulou Reference Raftopoulou, Cavanagh and Walker1998, 127, 134–5, fig. 12:18–19; Reference Raftopoulou and Kaltsas2006a; Tsouli Reference Tsouli, Draycott and Stamatopoulou2016, 361–2). It thus bears an immediate resemblance to what the British excavators labelled Tomb A, which was built against a sloping bank so that its back and sides were embedded in the hillside, leaving only the façade exposed (Fig. 8).Footnote ²⁸ Tomb A was a rectangular built structure measuring approximately 3.2 by 1.6 m. Its walls were constructed largely and perhaps entirely from stone blocks, and it had a tile roof. On the western side, one of the short sides, there was a façade that was probably equipped with a pediment and akroteria. The interior had two vertically superimposed chambers. The lower chamber, approximately 0.5 m high and roofed with stone plaques, contained a single burial with the corpse resting directly on virgin soil; there were at least two skeletons in the upper chamber.

Fig. 8.

Section and plan of Hellenistic two-level tomb (Wace and Dickins Reference Wace and Dickins1906–7, pl. VI).

The Archaic tomb on Gerokomeiou seems to have been of the same basic design as Tomb A, though of simpler construction (the sole published photo seems to show rubble walls: Raftopoulou Reference Raftopoulou, Cavanagh and Walker1998, fig. 12:18). A burial was found in the lower chamber, and secondary burials and grave-goods in the upper chamber. No specific listing of grave-goods has been supplied, but the main burial (that in the lower chamber) evidently can be firmly dated to the second quarter of the sixth century based on the pottery associated with it. A series of channels around the tomb collected rainwater, and, in the Late Classical period, a conduit was built to control the flow of water in the area. The channels immediately around the tomb were made from roof tiles and were evidently constructed at the same time as the tomb itself; on one of the tiles was deposited a collection of 22 vases (all Lakonian III black-figure vases): one oinochoe, five lakainai, two deep cups, one skyphos, seven deep plates, one shallow dish, one ‘baby-feeder’ (a closed shape with a narrow spout) and four small stemmed cups. The excavator suggests that this collection of vases represents the vessels used in a funerary banquet for seven individuals (Raftopoulou Reference Raftopoulou, Cavanagh and Walker1998, 135). The vessels were all ‘cancelled’, in the sense that their bottoms had been pierced,Footnote ²⁹ and they were deposited upside down.Footnote ³⁰

When we turn our attention to the Archaic burials as a group, we find that in all of the 20 cases where a determination was possible and put into print, the corpse was inhumed, and it seems probable that all of the Archaic burials in Sparta were inhumations. Two of the cists contained multiple burials; one of these (in BB 53) was divided into two unequal parts and held the remains of an adult and a sub-adult. Published reports provide information about the disposition of remains in 12 instances, as indicated in Table 5.

Table 5.

Disposition of remains in Archaic burials in Sparta.

The orientations of six Archaic Spartan graves have been reported: east-north-east to west-south-west (with head at east); east to west (with head at east); east to west (with head at west); east to west (head position not reported); north-north-west to south-south-east (with head at south); north to south (head position not reported).

The published reports about the 31 Archaic graves from Sparta offer some information about age, none about sex. Eleven burials are identified as those of adults (five in cists, four in pits, one in a tile grave and one in an unspecified type of grave) and three burials are identified as those of sub-adults (two in cists, one in a tile grave). As noted above, in one instance, an adult and sub-adult were buried in the same cist.

Nineteen of the 31 graves are reported as containing no grave-goods; of the remaining 12 graves, seven had grave-goods (three cists, two tile graves, the two-level tomb and one grave of unreported type). All of the reported grave-goods consist of pottery. On the northern side of one of the pit graves (in BB 29), a nearly intact black-glazed hydria with a lid was found on the contemporary ground level. The excavators argue that it was a grave-marker (Zavvou and Themos Reference Zavvou, Themos, Cavanagh, Gallou and Georgiadis2009, 116), but it seems more likely that it was a vessel used for ritual purposes that was left on the grave (cf. the 22 vessels deposited outside the two-level tomb).

The Classical period

Arguably the biggest single change in our knowledge of Spartan burial practice has come about as the result of the discovery of the Olive Oil Cemetery, an organised extracommunal burial ground that was in use by the sixth century and continued to receive burials throughout the Hellenistic period.Footnote ³¹ As noted above, the finds from the site include Geometric pottery, but the earliest extant graves date to the Archaic period, and most date to the Classical and Hellenistic periods. Hence it is discussed in this section.

Before discussing the Olive Oil Cemetery, it is worth mentioning that there are indications of the existence of another extracommunal cemetery of Archaic to Classical date. As we have seen, it has been known since the 1930s that there was a Roman cemetery on the northern edge of Sparta, in the Mousga ravine. In the 1990s and early 2000s more tombs of Roman date belonging to that cemetery were found (see, e.g., Zavvou Reference Zavvou1994; Themos and Zavvou Reference Themos and Zavvou2001), and in 2000–1 the construction of a new road in the same area required excavations that revealed a tomb of the Late Archaic to Early Classical period. The excavators of the tomb expressed the opinion that it confirmed Eleni Kourinou's conjecture (Kourinou Reference Kourinou2000, 218) that the Roman cemetery in the Mousga ravine was the site of an earlier cemetery.Footnote ³²

The discovery of the Olive Oil Cemetery came about as the result of a rescue excavation that was carried out in 2008–9 under the auspices of the Fifth Ephorate and directed by Maria Tsouli. A preliminary report of the excavation was published in 2013;Footnote ³³ a final report is not expected to appear anytime in the near future. It is located in BB 151, in the south-western part of the ancient city, approximately 1.3 km south of the Roman theatre on the acropolis (Fig. 3). Although it is situated close to the centre of modern Sparta, the cemetery escaped detection for a long period of time because it is located on the slope of a hill that runs down to the Magoulitsa stream bed. The intensive use of the space, along with the erosion of material from further up the slope, created a rapid shift in the vertical level of the site; there is roughly a 3 m difference in elevation between the earliest and latest graves, and the lowest level of the cemetery lay under 4 m of fill (Tsouli Reference Tsouli and Sporn2013, 155, n. 31).

By the criteria specified above, this was clearly an extracommunal cemetery. In its original setting it was situated to the east of a 1.6 m-wide road that ran north-west to south-east along the eastern edge of the Magoulitsa (Fig. 9) (Tsouli Reference Tsouli and Sporn2013, 154–7; Reference Tsouli, Draycott and Stamatopoulou2016, 362). It was, therefore, located on the margins of Sparta, and the area occupied by the cemetery was used solely for funerary purposes. It is significant that when the wall circuit was built in the Hellenistic period, the cemetery fell outside the wall and hence was, literally, extramural after that point. One might also note that one of the two Roman cemeteries of Sparta was also built on the eastern edge of the Magoulitsa, approximately 450 m north-west of this cemetery (Tsouli Reference Tsouli and Sporn2013, 153–4).

Fig. 9.

Peribolos A in the Olive Oil Cemetery seen from the north. Peribolos A is outlined with a dotted line; the skeleton in the middle of Peribolos A is the remains of a horse (Tsouli Reference Tsouli and Sporn2013, fig. 1; Ephorate of Antiquities of Lakonia – Regional Office, © Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports/Archaeological Receipts Fund).

The Olive Oil Cemetery was intensively used; earlier graves were destroyed to make way for later ones and piles of bones, especially skulls, from earlier burials were collected outside newer ones. New graves were in some cases built directly on top of older ones; the cover stones of older graves sometimes served as the floors of new graves (Tsouli Reference Tsouli and Sporn2013, 160; Reference Tsouli, Draycott and Stamatopoulou2016, 366).

To date, 69 graves have been uncovered, but only the south-west corner of the cemetery has been excavated – it definitely extends further on both the northern and eastern sides.Footnote ³⁴ In terms of typology, 62 of the 69 graves are simple pit graves, typically oval in shape, cut into soil or the conglomerate bedrock. They are covered by tiles, clay plaques, stone plaques and earth fill. There are, in addition, two cist graves and five pot burials. All of the burials are inhumations, and skeletal remains are (with one exception) disposed in a supine extended position with arms parallel to the body or, more rarely, on the pelvis or chest (the exception is Tomb 30, in which the skeleton was buried in a contracted position). Almost all of the graves contain single burials (Tsouli Reference Tsouli and Sporn2013, 157; Reference Tsouli, Draycott and Stamatopoulou2016, 366).

The preliminary excavation report does not provide a precise chronological breakdown of the 69 graves, but the vast majority of them are Classical or Hellenistic in date. The tombs take their orientation from the road, and almost all of them are aligned north-west to south-east, like the road, except in a few instances in which the orientation was changed to maximise available space. Heads are always located on the south-eastern side of the grave (Tsouli Reference Tsouli and Sporn2013, 160).

There is a clear differentiation between the earlier and later levels of the cemetery. The graves in the lower levels were relatively carefully built, typically arranged in clusters and demarcated by three or four rows (distributed horizontally) of middle-sized, unworked river stones set at the contemporary ground level. Some of the tombs in this level have stones placed under the head of the corpses. The graves in the upper level were shallower and simpler, and lack clear delimitation. The excavator suggests that these burials were made in a rush, perhaps during some sort of emergency (Tsouli Reference Tsouli and Sporn2013, 158).

All five of the pot burials were for sub-adults, but otherwise most of the deceased are adults. No information about sex ratios has been published. Eighteen of the 69 graves were supplied with grave-goods, primarily in the form of pottery and small numbers of bronze and iron objects. No grave contained more than four objects, and there are no precious metals or exotic materials among the grave-goods (Tsouli Reference Tsouli and Sporn2013, 158–9).

Five features of this cemetery merit further discussion: periboloi, horse burials, evidence for banqueting, finds of unusual kantharoid vases and the absence of grave-markers.

In the lower levels of the cemetery, many tombs are grouped in clusters and surrounded by rectangular periboloi made from medium-sized stones with mud as a binder (Fig. 9). Graves within periboloi do not differ substantially from those found outside periboloi except that less effort was invested in delimiting the former. The earliest of these periboloi seem to have been built in the sixth century, after which they were continually rebuilt and reconfigured, sometimes using materials from earlier structures. In the area excavated so far, two large periboloi have been uncovered and labelled by the excavators Periboloi A and B. Both periboloi were originally constructed in the Archaic period, but their configuration as excavated dates to the Classical period (Tsouli Reference Tsouli and Sporn2013, 159–60; Reference Tsouli, Draycott and Stamatopoulou2016, 366–9).

Only Peribolos A has been fully excavated. It measures 4.6 by 3.5 m, is oriented north-west to south-east, like the road alongside which it is situated, and has an entrance on the southern side. There are two distinct phases at different levels, with material from the earlier phase reused in the latter phase. Six graves were found in the lower level and eight in the upper level. The single most remarkable feature of Peribolos A is that it is centred around a horse burial, with the horse placed in a specially built grave made from river stones.

The horse burial from Peribolos A is, in fact, just one of five in the cemetery. All of the horses were interred either intact or carefully cut into pieces and then reconstructed in the grave (no details of age, sex, etc. of any of the horses are supplied in the excavation report). All bear slaughtering marks, and hence did not die of natural causes. No traces of fire were found on the bones, so they do not seem to have been sacrificed and eaten. In three instances (Peribolos A and Graves 28a and 29), a horse burial was not disturbed by later graves in the area, despite the fact that human burials were partially destroyed or removed to make way for new graves. Tsouli suggests that these horse burials served as an enduring focus for a set of family tombs (Tsouli Reference Tsouli, Draycott and Stamatopoulou2016, 370). In the nearby Roman cemetery, the heads of horses and dogs were found on top of a number of graves, and Pausanias (3.20.9) claims that Tyndareus sacrificed a horse as part of administering the oath to Helen's suitors (Themos Reference Themos2006a; Tsouli Reference Tsouli and Sporn2013, 160–1; Reference Tsouli, Draycott and Stamatopoulou2016, 369–71; a horse burial of unstated date has also been excavated in Magoula: see Tsiangouris Reference Tsiangouris2010a).

Evidence for banqueting in the cemetery was found in the form of large quantities of sherds collected from outside the graves. The pottery in question primarily consists of vessels for liquids (skyphoi, kantharoi, lakainai) along with a considerable number of shallow and deep dishes for food (this assemblage closely corresponds to that found outside the Archaic tomb in BB 117A). Many of the drinking vessels were pierced before firing, so they were clearly intended for funerary use. In addition to the pottery, two deposits of black, greasy earth were uncovered, both containing bones of birds and ovicaprids along with sherds with strong traces of burning. No human bones were found in these areas, so they were not related to cremation but rather to food preparation on site. It remains unclear whether the food and drink in question were used in burial or mourning ceremonies or whether they were consumed as some sort of post-depositional religious ritual (Tsouli Reference Tsouli, Draycott and Stamatopoulou2016, 371–7).

One of the most common offerings in this cemetery, found both inside and on top of graves, was what the excavator calls a complex kantharoid vessel, with a high foot, a calyx-shaped bowl, vertical strap-handles and a plain, out-turned rim (Fig. 10). These vessels have a separate lid with a denticulated rim. Both vase and lid have holes for the insertion of a vertical metal dowel that attaches the lid to the vase. Very similar vases have been found in the Tomb of the Lakedaimonians in the Kerameikos in Athens and a Hellenistic tomb in Sparta (Tsouli Reference Tsouli, Draycott and Stamatopoulou2016, 374). These seem to be ceremonial vessels used exclusively in funerary rites, possibly for the pouring of libations. Tsouli draws a connection between these vessels and the kantharoi depicted on many Lakedaimonian ‘hero reliefs’ (Tsouli Reference Tsouli and Sporn2013, 162–3; Reference Tsouli, Draycott and Stamatopoulou2016, 355–60, 373–7; see the supplementary material, Appendix 8, for further discussion of the hero reliefs).

Fig. 10.

Two complex kantharoid vessels from the Olive Oil Cemetery: (a) SM 16681 and (b) SM 16698, showing the metal dowel in the interior (Tsouli Reference Tsouli and Sporn2013, figs 5–6; Ephorate of Antiquities of Lakonia – Regional Office, © Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports/Archaeological Receipts Fund).

Finally, it is noteworthy that no grave-markers of any kind were found (Tsouli Reference Tsouli and Sporn2013, 157). This is probably significant in that the area was in continuous use for at least 300 years. It is unlikely that grave-markers would have been looted while the cemetery was still in use, and, due to the rapid rise in elevation, the lower levels of the cemetery were not accessible when the cemetery did go out of use. All of this suggests that there never were any grave-markers in this cemetery (beyond the periboloi).

In addition to the burials in the cemetery discussed above, approximately 16 intracommunal graves (from four different sites) dating to the Classical period have been found in Sparta (Fig. 11 and see the supplementary material, Appendix 4, for the details). The uncertainty springs from the publication of two separate grave groups, one in BB 53 containing eight cist graves of Archaic and Classical date (Maltezou Reference Maltezou2011d) and another in BB 58 containing 24 graves of Archaic to Roman date, without any specific breakdown of how many tombs belong to each period (Maltezou Reference Maltezou2010a).Footnote ³⁵ In addition, the excavation report for the two-level tomb of Archaic date in BB 117A makes mention of a group of cist and pit graves ‘covered with fill of the late fifth–early fourth century bc’ (Raftopoulou Reference Raftopoulou, Cavanagh and Walker1998, 135). For cataloguing purposes, four of the eight graves in BB 53 and four of the 24 graves in BB 58 are assumed to be of Classical date. The cluster of graves in BB 117A is tentatively assigned to the Classical period (but it is possible that it is earlier) and assumed to consist of three cists and three pits.

Fig. 11.

Locations of Classical intracommunal burials in Sparta.

Based on these assumptions, the 16 intracommunal graves of Classical date consist of nine cists, four pits and three graves of unstated type; in all of the instances where the requisite information is supplied (five of the 16), the burials are inhumations; all appear to be single burials. In the sole instance in which the requisite information is supplied, the corpse was laid out in a supine extended fashion with the head resting on a stone. The age and sex of the occupants are not reported for any of the 16 tombs, but one can be tentatively identified as an adult based on the length of the pit (1.9 m). The orientation of just one grave is reported: north to south with the head of the corpse on the southern side. Twelve of the 16 graves are reported as containing no grave-goods; no information is supplied about the other four.

It should be noted that there are also three graves, likely of Classical date, found in what seems to be an extracommunal cemetery of Archaic to Classical date on the northern edge of the city, in the Mousga ravine (see sources cited n. 33 above).

The Hellenistic period

Sometime after the middle of the Hellenistic period, the Olive Oil Cemetery went out of use and, at roughly the same time or shortly thereafter, a new cemetery was laid out 450 m to the north-west. Burials continued to take place in the latter cemetery (what is here called the Southwest Cemetery) throughout the Roman period. The long period of time during which this cemetery was in use, the very large number of tombs excavated in it (likely close to 1,000)Footnote ³⁶ and the highly preliminary state of publication make it impossible to supply detailed information about the Hellenistic graves found there, so it will not be discussed in detail here. The same goes for small numbers of Late Hellenistic burials that form parts of clusters of graves, found in other sections of the city, that for the most part date to the Roman period (Tsouli and Maltezou Reference Tsouli and Maltezouforthcoming).

Throughout the Hellenistic period, burials continued to take place intracommunally, both in small clusters and singly. More than 60 intracommunal (i.e. located outside the Olive Oil Cemetery and Southwest Cemetery) Hellenistic burials are known from Sparta (Fig. 12 and see the supplementary material, Appendix 5, for the details).Footnote ³⁷ The total number of tombs is approximate because one of the relevant excavation reports mentions two rows of simple cist and pit graves without giving specific numbers (Steinhauer Reference Steinhauer1972a). Another report mentions a group of ten tombs of Hellenistic and Roman dates (Maltezou Reference Maltezou2011b), three of which are specified as being Hellenistic (two tile, one two-level) and two Roman (both tile) – no information about tomb types or dates is supplied for the other five.Footnote ³⁸ A third report mentions an unspecified number of built tombs of Hellenistic date (Vasilogambrou, Tsouli, and Maltezou Reference Vasilogambrou, Tsouli, Maltezou, Zumi, Karapanagiotou and Xanthopoulou2018, 334–5). A fourth report lists a group of 24 tombs ranging in date from the late second century bc to the second century ad, without providing details of numbers of different tomb types (Vlachachakos and Maltezou Reference Vlachachakos and Maltezou2011; see also Tsouli and Maltezou Reference Tsouli and Maltezouforthcoming). A fifth report mentions a group of Hellenistic and Roman tombs without giving any numbers (Themos and Zavvou Reference Themos, Zavvou, Guimier-Sorbets and Morizot2010: 228 n. 10, 229; see also Zavvou and Themos Reference Zavvou and Themos1999). Assuming that there were eight graves in all among the two rows of cist and pit graves mentioned in the first report, that there were six Hellenistic graves among the ten mentioned in the second report, that there were four graves in the group of built tombs mentioned in the third report, that there were four Hellenistic graves among the 24 mentioned in the fourth report and without counting the burials mentioned in the fifth report, the currently known total comes to 72.

Fig. 12.

Locations of Hellenistic intracommunal burials in Sparta.

The numerical breakdown of tomb types is supplied in Table 6.Footnote ³⁹ The specific design of the five tombs catalogued here as ‘built’ is not clear from the excavation reports, and it possible that some of these five tombs were of the two-level type. Iron nails found in one of the cists and one of the pits suggest the presence of wooden coffins in some graves.

Table 6.

Tomb types of Hellenistic intracommunal burials in Sparta.

The popularity of two-level tombs is noteworthy, as is the appearance of a new type of burial: a marble urn (holding cremated remains). While just one such urn has been found in situ, a number of very similar urns have been found in Sparta, and all are likely to have been used for funerary purposes (though in some cases at least this was a secondary usage for a vessel that originally had domestic functions) (Poupaki Reference Poupaki, Cavanagh, Gallou and Georgiadis2009; cf. Piteros Reference Piteros2010). The urns in question were crafted locally and are all simple vases with roughly dressed outer surfaces and carefully smoothed interiors. The one example found in situ measures 0.44 m high with a maximum diameter of 0.37 m. It has a marble lid, and it is likely that this was standard practice.

The existence of these urns speaks to the appearance of cremation, not hitherto securely attested in Sparta, in the Hellenistic period. Beyond the single marble urn found in situ, four other Hellenistic burials with cremated remains are known from Sparta (one tile grave, one cist, one pit, one pot). That said, inhumation seems to have remained the dominant option.

In all eight cases in which the disposition of remains in inhumations is specified, the corpses were placed in a extended position. Four of the cists and (almost certainly) all of the two-level tombs were used for multiple burials. No consistent orientation is apparent in the Hellenistic burials from Sparta. The nine cists excavated at the former Chymofix site at BG O12 have four different orientations (north-east to south-west, north-west to south-east, north-north-west to south-south-east, east to west) and cists elsewhere in the city are oriented north-north-west to south-south-east, north-east to south-west, east to west and north to south. Similarly, three of the four two-level tombs excavated by the British in 1907 in BB 124 were sufficiently well preserved to show the orientations of the tombs: one ran east-north-east to west-south-west, whereas the other two ran east-south-east to west-north-west. One of the more recently excavated two-level tombs is oriented north-east to south-west (BB 123), whereas another is oriented north-west to south-east (BB 135).

Among the 25 cist burials, four held sub-adults and three held adults. Two of the seven tile graves held sub-adults, one held an adult. One of the pot burials held a sub-adult. In all other instances, the age of the occupant is unstated, and there is no significant information about sex ratios.

With respect to grave-goods, all of the two-level built tombs seem to have been very richly equipped. Two examples that were found intact (in BG P14 and BB 124) each contained more than 100 vessels of various kinds. The information about the presence/absence of grave-goods in the remaining tomb types is presented in Table 7.

Table 7.

Grave-goods in Hellenistic intracommunal burials in Sparta.

Almost all of the grave-goods consist of terracotta or glass vessels. Small amounts of silver, in the form of coins and earrings, were found, as was gold, in the form of coins (in the urn burial and one of the two-level tombs) and in the form of foil leaves that originally formed parts of wreaths (in two cists, two pits and one two-level tomb). Other finds include strigils, bronze coins and bone pins. There is a marked difference in the number of grave-goods associated with the two-level tombs, and that, along with the resources necessary to build such a tomb, strongly suggests that in Hellenistic Sparta socio-economic status was at least partially reflected in choice of tomb type (see below). One small cautionary note is that specific two-level tombs apparently remained in use for multiple burials over long periods of time (for example, the one in BB 135 seems to have received burials over the course of a century and a half), so there was a gradual accumulation of grave-goods in a way that was not possible with other types of burials (most of which received just one burial at one point in time).

The settlement organisation of Sparta

The ideal type of the Greek city with a single, carefully delineated centre and clearly differentiated spaces has long had a powerful hold on scholarly imaginations. De Polignac notes that there is an enduring tendency to picture the settlement organisation of Greek cities as defined by:

Much of the newer scholarship on Greek urbanism has warned against adopting a teleological view that sees unicentric, spatially differentiated cities as the inevitable endpoint of an orderly process of linear evolution. This scholarship suggests instead that many Greek communities, some quite large, were, well into the Classical period, polycentric and lacked a strong functional differentiation of spaces (see, for instance, Greco Reference Greco and Greco1999).

Sparta as we know it from the textual sources is an obvious example of a polycentric urban centre. The locus classicus for the settlement organisation of Sparta is Thucydides’ statement that ‘the city is neither built in a compact form nor adorned with magnificent temples and public edifices, but composed of villages after the old fashion of Hellas’ (1.10.2, translation Crawley Reference Crawley1996).Footnote ⁴⁵ Thucydides’ characterisation of Sparta suggests that Sparta's four constituent villages had not in his time merged together to form a seamless urban fabric.Footnote ⁴⁶ Indeed, Marcello Lupi makes the case that Sparta was even more polycentric than Thucydides would have us believe. He argues that just one village, Pitana, made up the entirety of what is here labelled Sparta and that the other villages were, in effect, suburbs located in the area immediately surrounding Pitana/Sparta (Lupi Reference Lupi, Hodkinson and Powell2006, 195–207; cf. Tosti Reference Tosti, Longo, Di Cesare and Privitera2016, 166 n. 4).

Despite the fact that Sparta does not fit the traditional model of the unicentric Greek urban centre, this model has exercised a strong influence on prior scholarship on Sparta in that the constituent villages are typically understood as consisting of nucleated settlements that had the same sort of spatial differentiation, particularly between the living and the dead, as the ideal type of the Greek polis. In other words, the settlement organisation of each of the four Spartan villages has been assumed to have replicated in many respects that of the ideal Greek city but on a smaller scale. Hence, Kourinou and others argue that there were from an early date four distinct cemeteries in Sparta, one for each of the constituent villages (Kourinou Reference Kourinou2000, 215–19) and Tsouli makes the case that the Olive Oil Cemetery was the burial ground for the village of Mesoa (Tsouli Reference Tsouli and Sporn2013, 153).Footnote ⁴⁷

The recently published archaeological evidence suggests that Sparta fits the newer model of Greek cities, not only with respect to being polycentric, but also with respect to having a low degree of spatial differentiation. This is most immediately evident from the distribution of burials. Some burials are clumped together in marginal spaces that are functionally distinct in the sense that they are reserved exclusively for funerary use. Other burials, however, are strung out along roadsides and across hillsides in close proximity to residential and commercial spaces.

A particularly clear example of this intermingling can be found in the north-eastern part of the city, which was the site of a substantial number of rescue excavations that were carried out in close proximity to one another. The area in question, a rectangle c.300 m north to south by c.200 m east to west comprises BB 97–102 and BG O12, N12–14, and is situated in the circumscribed flat space between the eastern edge of Palaiokastro hill and the Eurotas.Footnote ⁴⁸ As mentioned above, one of the main roads into the city ran through this area. Excavations have revealed a dense array of remains that includes: Protogeometric, Geometric, Archaic, Hellenistic and Roman graves; residential remains from the Geometric, Archaic, Classical, Hellenistic and Roman periods; Hellenistic workshops and shops; and multiple sanctuaries. One of these sanctuaries was a hero shrine centred on a Geometric grave, with Archaic and Classical architectural remains and votives, including 2,500+ fragments of clay plaques and 800+ figurines, dating from the Archaic to the Hellenistic period (Flouris Reference Flouris1996; Pavlides Reference Pavlides, Cavanagh, Cavanagh and Roy2010, 565–8; Reference Pavlides2011, 148–51; Tosti Reference Tosti2011). Another sanctuary was embellished with a long, narrow building that was in use from the Archaic to the Roman period (Dawkins Reference Dawkins1908–9, 3; Christou Reference Christou1964a, 136; Delivorrias Reference Delivorrias1968a; Reference Delivorrias1968b; Reference Delivorrias1969b; Spyropoulos Reference Spyropoulos1980; Stibbe Reference Stibbe1989, 89–92, figs 21–6; Reference Stibbe and Post1996, 29–31; Schörner Reference Schörner2007, 113, 291–2 A5; Salapata Reference Salapata2014, 331 n. 12).

It is worth noting that there is no obvious trend toward a higher degree of spatial differentiation with the passage of time. The persistent absence of functional differentiation of spaces in Sparta is evident elsewhere in the city. For example, the finds from the triangular area just to the south of the acropolis consisting of BB 120A, 122, 123, 123a–b and 124 (roughly 300 m north to south by 200 m east to west at its widest point) include residences from the Archaic, Hellenistic and Roman periods, two different ancient roads and graves of the Archaic, Hellenistic and Roman periods.Footnote ⁴⁹ The area just to the north of BB 124 produced an array of finds, dating to the Archaic and Classical periods, characteristic of Lakonian sanctuaries (e.g. lead wreaths and miniature vases) (Raftopoulou Reference Raftopoulou1992a). In a similar vein, a Hellenistic house and a Hellenistic tomb were discovered in BB 117.Footnote ⁵⁰ The finds from BB 125, the site of a pair of two-level Hellenistic tombs, also include material from a small shrine that was in use from the Archaic to the Hellenistic period (Steinhauer Reference Steinhauer1973–4a; Salapata Reference Salapata1992, 166 no. 27; Pavlides Reference Pavlides2011, 155–6). This material, both in terms of the individual components and the overall assemblage, is identical to that found in other sanctuaries in Sparta, and hence there is no reason to believe that it was specifically funerary in character. The spatial overlap between graves and sanctuaries in Sparta is something that is also mentioned in the relevant literary sources (see the supplementary material, Appendix 8).

A potentially useful comparandum can be found in Attica. In the fourth century, many Attic demes, for example those located along the western coast, had two or three settlement nuclei that were strung out at intervals of 600–700 m along main roads. Within each nucleus houses were interspersed with clusters of tombs and small sanctuaries (Steinhauer Reference Steinhauer and Vlachopoulos2017, 116; see also the discussion in Papadopoulou Reference Papadopoulou2016; Reference Papadopoulou2017). One might speculate that the settlement organisation of Sparta was roughly similar, though it is likely that the intervals between nuclei would have decreased over time. The spatial patterning of burials as seen in Fig. 13 could conceivably have originated in small clusters of tombs that formed parts of distinct settlement nuclei that gradually radiated outward along roadsides. From this perspective, one might think that what Thucydides (1.10.2) had in the back of his mind in making his comparison between the settlement organisation of Athens and that of Sparta is the physical layout of Attic demes with which he was familiar.

There is at present no evidence for the existence in Sparta of intracommunal cemeteries – spaces at or near the centre of the city (i.e. not at the boundaries of the city) that were reserved exclusively for funerary use – in the periods under consideration here. Burials seem to have taken place in small clusters that were strung out longitudinally along roadsides and within spaces used on an everyday basis for living and working, as was the case in the aforementioned Attic demes, rather than in large groupings in reserved areas that could be called cemeteries. There is, however, a certain degree of ambiguity in specifying precisely when an intracommunal cluster of graves becomes an intramural cemetery; the number of graves and the extent to which they occupy a space that is reserved for funerary use and clearly segregated from spaces used for everyday living are relevant factors that are difficult to quantify precisely.

The scattered nature of rescue excavations makes it impossible to state definitively that there were no intracommunal cemeteries in Sparta, and it is certainly conceivable that some intracommunal spaces came, over the course of time, to be used primarily for funerary purposes. A possibly illustrative example can be found in BB 49A and 55, on the western side of Xenia hill, where approximately 50 graves have been excavated (Vlachachakos and Maltezou Reference Vlachachakos and Maltezou2011; Tsouli and Maltezou Reference Tsouli and Maltezouforthcoming). The graves range in date from the end of the second century bc through to the third century ad; the earliest burials took place in BB 55 and, over the course of time, extended westward into BB 49A. The excavators refer to this area as a Roman cemetery, and the apparent absence of other finds of the Roman era (e.g. architectural remains) from the relevant excavations indicates that this appellation is justified. However, the presence of abundant ceramics from the Archaic and Classical periods in BB 49A and the siting of the initial nucleus of graves to the west of Xenia hill in BB 55 suggest that what was originally a typical cluster of graves situated on the edge of a hill (and probably alongside a road) gradually grew into an unplanned intracommunal cemetery. Continued excavations in Sparta may reveal that something similar happened elsewhere in earlier periods. The difference in scale between the number of burials known from BB 49A and 55 (less than 50) and the roughly contemporaneous Southwest Cemetery (close to 1,000) suggests that if there were indeed pre-Roman intracommunal cemeteries in Sparta, they were quite small.

Was Spartan burial practice exceptional?

The idea that Spartan burial practice diverged sharply from that elsewhere in the Greek world has roots that go back at least as far Plutarch, who traces what he portrays as unique Spartan funerary customs to Lycurgus:

This view has been picked up and amplified in modern scholarship; hence, for example, Paul Cartledge, in an article entitled ‘Spartan ways of death’, argues that, ‘the Spartans’ culturally generated and enforced attitudes to death and burial set them apart, not only from other Greeks in antiquity, but from pretty much any other human society that has ever existed’ (Cartledge Reference Cartledge, Cataldi, Bianco and Cuniberti2012, 23).

The question of the extent to which Spartan burial practice was exceptional can of course be properly addressed only by comparing it to the situation in other Greek communities. The baseline comparison has always been Athens; the importance of Athens in scholarly work on Greek funerary practices is reflected in the fact that fully half of Donna Kurtz and John Boardman's seminal Greek Burial Customs (Reference Kurtz and Boardman1971) is devoted solely to Athens. Funerary customs in Sparta do indeed show obvious divergences from those in Athens. For example, cremation was practised with varying degrees of frequency in Athens starting in the Protogeometric period and continuing thereafter, whereas there is no firm evidence of cremation in Sparta before the Hellenistic period. However, Athens in the periods under consideration here was exceptional in a variety of different ways, and it is far from apparent that one could reach any conclusions about Spartan exceptionalism with respect to burial practice by taking Athens as a proxy for the rest of the Greek world.

In the best of all possible worlds it would be possible to compare Spartan burial practices in the Protogeometric to the Hellenistic period with those in a large number of other Greek communities, but the requisite information either does not exist or is not easily accessible. It is, however, possible and productive to look at Argos and Corinth. These two poleis have been the focus of extended programmes of excavations that have been thoroughly published. In addition, as we will see, communities in an arc running from Thessaly to the north-eastern Peloponnese display a proclivity toward intracommunal burial in the Early Iron Age. As a result, communities from this area are particularly good places to test the degree to which Spartan burial practice was exceptional, in large part because the continuation of adult intracommunal burials in the post-Geometric period is typically seen as the single most important trait that sets Sparta apart from all other Greek communities. If intracommunal burial did indeed disappear in areas where it was unusually prominent in the Early Iron Age, its documented continuation in Sparta would be noteworthy. Furthermore, since particular burial customs – such as the aforementioned proclivity for intracommunal burial – are in some cases regional rather than local or Panhellenic, Spartan exceptionalism is perhaps best tested by looking at poleis located near it in the Peloponnese.

We begin with the issue of intracommunal burial. The current orthodoxy is that in almost all Greek communities other than Sparta, intracommunal burial of adults ceased at the end of the Geometric period, after which point in time burials of adults were concentrated in extracommunal cemeteries (see, e.g., Morris Reference Morris1987, 57–71, 171–210; summary in Snodgrass Reference Snodgrass, Owen and Preston2009, 100). Plutarch's mention of intracommunal burial in Sparta, the discovery of intracommunal burials there (in small numbers until quite recently; see the discussion above) and the ostensible absence of extracommunal cemeteries prior to the Roman period led some scholars to conclude that Spartan tolerance for intracommunal burial represented a structural inversion of the vast majority of other Greek communities in the Archaic, Classical and Hellenistic periods (see, e.g., Kurtz and Boardman Reference Kurtz and Boardman1971, 188; Sourvinou-Inwood Reference Sourvinou-Inwood1995, 438–9.)

The new archaeological evidence from Sparta shows that burials took place on both an extracommunal and intracommunal basis in the Archaic, Classical and Hellenistic periods. In and of itself, this does not necessarily affect our view of burial practices beyond Sparta, since it is possible that Sparta remains exceptional but in a different way than had been understood previously. That is, it is possible that what made Sparta exceptional was not the complete absence of extracommunal burials but rather the simultaneous practice of both extracommunal and intracommunal burials after the end of the Geometric period.

However, the archaeological evidence clearly shows that both extracommunal and intracommunal burial were practised in both Argos and Corinth in the Archaic, Classical and Hellenistic periods. The simultaneous existence of both extracommunal and intracommunal burials after the Geometric period does not, therefore, make Sparta particularly exceptional.

For Argos, we are fortunate to have at our disposal a series of invaluable plans in a volume edited by Anne Pariente and Gilles Touchais and published in 1998 (Pariente and Touchais Reference Pariente and Touchais1998). Those plans (Figs 14, 15, 16, 17) show the locations of known graves, workshops, roads, etc. for the Protogeometric and Geometric periods (combined into a single plan) as well as the Archaic, Classical and Hellenistic periods. Interpreting these plans is complicated by the fact that the precise line of the circuit wall of Argos has not been satisfactorily established (see Marchetti Reference Marchetti, Mulliez and Banaka-Dimaki2013 and the sources cited therein), but that does not represent an insuperable difficulty because it returns us to the terminological issues treated above. A glance at the plans in question shows beyond doubt that burials continued to take place in the heart of Argos’ urban fabric throughout the Archaic, Classical and Hellenistic periods.

Fig. 14.

Argos in the Protogeometric and Geometric periods (Pariente and Touchais Reference Pariente and Touchais1998, pl. IX; plan EfA, Y. Rizakis, 1997).

Fig. 15.

Argos in the Archaic period (Pariente and Touchais Reference Pariente and Touchais1998, pl. X; plan EfA, Y. Rizakis, 1997).

Fig. 16.

Argos in the Classical period (Pariente and Touchais Reference Pariente and Touchais1998, pl. XI; plan EfA, Y. Rizakis, 1997).

Fig. 17.

Argos in the Hellenistic period (Pariente and Touchais Reference Pariente and Touchais1998, pl. XII; plan EfA, Y. Rizakis, 1997).

Furthermore, the Classical and Hellenistic burials in Argos have recently been intensively studied by Nikolas Dimakis as part of his monograph (Reference Dimakis, Cavanagh, Cavanagh and Roy2016) on funerary evidence for social status in the northern Peloponnese. Dimakis’ work includes a plan (Fig. 18) that clearly indicates that intracommunal burials took place across the entirety of the urban core of Argos. Dimakis concludes that:

The striking similarity between Sparta and Argos is reinforced by the fact – evident in Fig. 18 – that intracommunal burials in Argos are strung out along roadsides, just as seems to have been the case in Sparta (on the relationship between burials and roads in Argos, see also Barakari-Gleni Reference Barakari-Gleni1996–7, 512; Dimakis Reference Dimakis, Cavanagh, Cavanagh and Roy2010, 34).

Fig. 18.

Burials in Classical and Hellenistic Argos (after Dimakis Reference Dimakis2016, fig. 10; reproduced with the kind permission of the author).

The situation at Corinth presents instructive similarities and differences. In his study of Corinthian burials between 1100 and 550, Keith Dickey concludes that:

Dimakis’ work focuses on the Classical and Hellenistic periods, which were not covered by Dickey, and he comes to the same conclusion, namely that intracommunal burials continued to take place in Corinth throughout the Hellenistic period. Dimakis also notes that, unlike Sparta and Argos, where intracommunal burials are widely dispersed throughout the urban fabric, the intracommunal burials in Corinth are concentrated in cemeteries (Fig. 19) (Dimakis Reference Dimakis2016, 31).

Fig. 19.

Classical and Hellenistic cemeteries in Corinth (Dimakis Reference Dimakis2016, fig. 13; reproduced with the kind permission of the author).

All that said, the existence of the aforementioned intracommunal graves in Sparta, Argos and Corinth would not be surprising if most or all of them held sub-adults.Footnote ⁵¹ However, the limited amount of available osteological evidence and the typology of intracommunal tombs in all of these places do not support the idea that they contained mostly sub-adults. In Sparta, as we have seen, there are 31 intracommunal graves of Archaic date, 11 of which are identified as those of adults (five in cists, four in pits, one in a tile grave and one in an unspecified type of grave) and three as those of sub-adults (two in cists, one in a tile grave). No information is provided about the ages of the occupants of the other graves.

Most of the 69 Classical and Hellenistic burials in the Olive Oil Cemetery in Sparta are those of adults, but there are five pot burials in the cemetery, all for sub-adults. This is significant because it suggests that, as was the case elsewhere in the Greek world, pot burials were the preferred form of interring sub-adults, and because most and possibly all of the 16 intracommunal graves from Classical Sparta are not pot burials (nine cists, four pits, three unspecified). With respect to the Hellenistic intracommunal graves from Sparta, of the 25 cist burials, three held adults and four held sub-adults. One of the four tile graves held an adult and two held sub-adults. One of the pot burials held a sub-adult. (In all other instances, the age of the occupant is unstated.)

Hence, the currently available information about intracommunal burials in Archaic, Classical and Hellenistic Sparta provides no warrant whatsoever for believing that most or all of them held sub-adults. Indeed, in a non-trivial number of instances, it is clear that these burials held adults.

The same holds true for Argos. There too incomplete information is available about the age of the occupants of most of the intracommunal tombs, and, due to the absence of clarity about the line of the circuit wall, separating intracommunal from extracommunal burials can be difficult. However, a group of 11 Hellenistic graves that are almost certainly intracommunal was excavated by Paul Courbin between 1953 and 1958, and published in detail by Philippe Bruneau in 1970 (Bruneau Reference Bruneau1970). The skeletal remains in many of these graves were studied by Robert Charles in the 1950s and 1960s (Charles Reference Charles1963), and, although the precise accuracy of Charles’ conclusions about age are open to question (Dimakis, personal communication), there is no reason to believe that he was incapable of distinguishing adults from sub-adults. When Philippe Charlier re-examined a considerable portion of all the skeletons from Argos studied by Charles, he provided broader age ranges for some individuals than those suggested by Charles, but there was no disagreement about whether specific individuals were adults or sub-adults (Charlier Reference Charlier, Mulliez and Banaka-Dimaki2013). The 11 graves in question include nine cists, one pit and one pot burial. There are two multiple burials, giving a total of 13 interred individuals: six are adults (all from the cists) and one is a sub-adult (from the pot burial). (No age is given for the other remains.) For obvious reasons, great caution is needed in extrapolating from a tiny sample, but, as is the case for Sparta, the limited evidence that is available indicates that many if not most of the intracommunal burials in Argos held adults.

For Corinth, Dickey catalogues 18 intracommunal burials from the Archaic period, all in sarcophagi.Footnote ⁵² Seven held adults and seven held sub-adults; the remains in four sarcophagi were too exiguous to suggest an age. For the Classical and Hellenistic periods, Dimakis catalogues 17 cist/pit/tile tombs and nine sarcophagi, all from intracommunal cemeteries (primarily that at Anaploga) for which the length of the tomb or sarcophagus is known. Determining age based on size of tomb or sarcophagus is a less than entirely straightforward process (see the cautionary notes in Liston Reference Liston1993, 133–4), but it is suggestive that 14 of the 17 cist/pit/tile tombs and five of the nine sarcophagi are longer than 1.5 m (a boundary that has been used in the past to separate sub-adult from adult burials: see Morris Reference Morris1987, 58–60; Houby-Nielsen Reference Houby-Nielsen1995, 177–8; Alexandridou Reference Alexandridou2016, 350 n. 173).

The cautions about sample sizes and incompleteness of information mentioned above apply here as well, but, once again, the available evidence strongly suggests that many if not most intracommunal burials in Archaic, Classical and Hellenistic Corinth held adults. Another way of looking at the same collection of material is that there is no positive evidence whatsoever that intracommunal burials from Archaic, Classical and Hellenistic Sparta, Argos or Corinth were limited to sub-adults.

The conclusion to be drawn from this is that the coexistence of extracommunal and intracommunal burial of adults in Sparta in the Archaic, Classical and Hellenistic periods does not, when compared to the situation in Argos and Corinth, seem particularly exceptional. The same conclusion holds true when we expand our focus from the location of burials to other factors. A complicating factor in comparing Sparta, Argos and Corinth is that the chronology of events in all three communities prior to the sixth century is dependent upon pottery sequences, which are not precisely aligned. Although the Protogeometric and Geometric periods in all three do overlap, there are some significant differences, as presented in Table 8.Footnote ⁵³ The Protogeometric period starts later and ends later in Sparta than it does in Argos and Corinth, and the Geometric period is shorter and ends slightly later.

Table 8.

Chronology of periods in Sparta, Argos and Corinth.

With this caveat in mind, a glance at Table 9 – which summarises what is known about burial rites, tomb types, disposition of remains, the frequency of secondary burials and grave-goods in Sparta, Argos and Corinth from the Protogeometric to the Hellenistic period – shows that developments in Spartan burial practice closely tracked those in Argos and Corinth.Footnote ⁵⁴ Some noteworthy overlaps are the near-complete absence of cremation prior to the Hellenistic period, the strikingly similar developmental trajectory of the disposition of remains (contracted in the Protogeometric and Geometric periods, a mix of contracted and extended in the Archaic period and extended in the Classical and Hellenistic periods) and strong similarities between the grave-goods found at all three sites in any given period. In all three communities, there is a tendency in the Archaic period for children to receive richer grave-goods than adults.

Table 9.

Comparison of burial practices in Sparta, Argos and Corinth from the Protogeometric to the Hellenistic period.

The match between Sparta and Argos is particularly close. In both Sparta and Argos some Classical graves in extracommunal cemeteries are surrounded by periboloi. The two-level tomb from BB 117A in Sparta dating to the second quarter of the sixth century finds a relatively close match in two elaborate tombs from Argos, both large rectangular structures built from limestone blocks, that date to the first quarter and the last quarter of the sixth century (Kritzas Reference Kritzas1973; Barakari-Gleni Reference Barakari-Gleni1996–7, 516–17). The limited number of such unusually lavish tombs suggests that in both Sparta and Argos a handful of individuals received special burials in the sixth century.

There is also evidence that suggests that horse burials, which prima facie appear to be quite an exotic element of Spartan burial practice, also took place in Argos. Excavations conducted in the south-eastern part of Argos in 1998–2000 uncovered, among other things, a burial dating to the Archaic period of a young male and, immediately adjacent, burials of an equid and a dog (Barakari-Gleni Reference Barakari-Gleni, Mulliez and Banaka-Dimaki2013). A rescue excavation in Argos in 1980 uncovered a collection of five horse skeletons. All the horses had been decapitated, and the heads were placed near the skeletons. Finds associated with the skeletons date them to the Archaic period. Unfortunately the context of the find is unclear; Mycenaean and Hellenistic graves were found in the area and some Hellenistic walls, but nothing else of Archaic date.Footnote ⁵⁵

A particularly noteworthy similarity between Sparta, Argos and Corinth is a general lack of investment in marking graves prior to the middle of the Hellenistic period. The paucity of inscribed mnemeia from Sparta (see the supplementary material, Appendix 8) stands in stark contrast to Athens, where more than 10,000 inscribed epitaphs dating to the Classical period have been found (Morris Reference Morris1992, 138 n. 7, 156). However, in this respect, Sparta is typical of the situation throughout much of the Peloponnese. As John Papapostolou notes in his study of Classical and Hellenistic grave stelai, ‘[t]he surviving grave stelai in the Peloponnese as a whole are relatively few … Moreover they lack indicative inscriptions and [there] exist virtually no representations’.Footnote ⁵⁶ Dimakis similarly observes that ‘[w]hat characterizes most of the grave stelai in the entire Classical and Hellenistic Peloponnese is their rarity’ (Dimakis Reference Dimakis2016, 44). In the same vein, Georgia Kokkorou-Alevras has shown that sculpted stone funerary monuments from the Archaic period are rare in the Peloponnese (Kokkorou-Alevras Reference Kokkorou-Alevras, Cavanagh, Cavanagh and Roy2010).

This pattern holds true in both Argos and Corinth throughout the time period covered in this article. In Argos, grave monuments of any kind are the exception rather than the rule before the middle of the Hellenistic period. For example, Courbin, in his study of Geometric graves in Argos, cites only one certain example of a grave-marker.Footnote ⁵⁷ A very small number of sculptured grave monuments dating to the Archaic period have been found in Argos (Kokkorou-Alevras Reference Kokkorou-Alevras, Cavanagh, Cavanagh and Roy2010, 278–9). The earliest-known inscribed epitaphs from Argos appear to date to the Classical period (e.g. SEG XXIX 362, 364), but they are rare.Footnote ⁵⁸ It is only in the Hellenistic period that they become at all numerous (e.g. SEG XI 343, XXVI 431, XXX 368, XLVIII 412–14, L 367, LIII 300, 303, LV 412, 418), and even then the numbers found do not in any way compare to those from Athens.Footnote ⁵⁹ There are, in addition, a handful of fourth-century grave-markers in the shape of naiskoi from Argos (Papapostolou Reference Papapostolou1993, 65 n. 188).

Benjamin Millis, in the course of publishing an inscribed grave monument found at Corinth and dating to the Classical period, highlights ‘the remarkable paucity of grave monuments from pre-Roman Corinth, despite more than a century of archaeological investigation, including the excavation of a large cemetery area’. The entire collection of identifiable grave monuments from Corinth, which begin in the Geometric period, numbers 50–60. Most of these monuments took the form of squared stone blocks set directly on the ground or on a base. Some of the later examples are inscribed, carry relief decoration, a moulding or a stone lekythos on top. Millis concludes that the ‘Corinthians’ use of grave monuments was sporadic’ (Millis Reference Millis2007, 363, 364).

There are, as one would expect, also non-trivial divergences between Sparta, Argos and Corinth. For example, the dominance of burial in cylindrical pithoi in seventh-century Argos finds no parallel in either Sparta or Corinth, and the Corinthians’ predilection for stone sarcophagi starting in the Archaic period sets them apart from the Spartans and Argives.

The provision of grave-goods offers a particularly interesting and significant instance of convergence and divergence between Sparta, Argos and Corinth. The grave-goods in all three communities were largely the same in the Protogeometric and Geometric periods. Sometime around 750 grave-goods other than iron dress pins disappear from Corinth and do not reappear in significant numbers until c.600. Interment in cylindrical pithoi became the dominant form of burial in Argos in the seventh century, and very few of these burials have any grave-goods.

As we have seen, of the 31 known Archaic intracommunal burials in Sparta, 19 are reported as containing no grave-goods; of the remaining 12 graves, at least seven had grave-goods – all in the form of pottery. In the three instances where it is possible to supply a relatively precise date, the burials in question took place in the late seventh or first quarter of the sixth century. The single burial in the Olive Oil Cemetery that is clearly identified as Archaic in the preliminary excavation report contained one vase from the middle of the sixth century.Footnote ⁶⁰ It is, therefore, possible that grave-goods were largely absent from all three communities for much of the seventh century.

However, a sharp divergence becomes noticeable over the course of the sixth century and into the Classical period. During this stretch of time, grave-goods seem to be rare to the point of being non-existent in Sparta, whereas in both Argos and Corinth they are common. Roughly half of the Classical burials in Argos contain grave-goods and virtually all of the Classical burials in Corinth include at least one vase (see the sources cited above in n. 54). It is only in the Hellenistic period that grave-goods reappear in any quantity in Sparta.

The near complete absence of grave-goods from Corinth for approximately 150 years has been attributed to the imposition of funerary legislation (Dickey Reference Dickey1992, 105–8), and passages from Plutarch's Instituta Laconica (Moralia 236f–40b) and Lycurgus (see the supplementary material, Appendix 8) make the plausible claim that this was true of Sparta as well. Indeed, burial practice in Sparta seems to show a degree of consistency that speaks to an unusually high level of state control. Hence, for instance, inscribed epitaphs are rare but extant in both Argos and Corinth throughout the Classical period, whereas the only certainly attested inscribed mnemeia in Sparta are associated with soldiers who died in war (see the supplementary material, Appendix 8). The Instituta Laconica states that these were the only permitted form of inscribed mnemeia, and this restriction of funerary behaviour appears to have been successfully enforced through the middle of the Hellenistic period. This is, of course, consistent with the general picture of Sparta found in much of the relevant ancient textual evidence, which portrays Sparta as an unusually collectivist society characterised by what was, by ancient Greek standards, a remarkably high degree of state control over individual behaviour.Footnote ⁶¹

One might, therefore, safely describe Spartan burial practices in many if not all periods as distinctive. At the same time, it is no longer apparent that Spartan burial practices were at any point in time so completely different from those found in other Greek communities as to make them truly exceptional. Indeed, the newly available archaeological evidence strongly suggests that from the Protogeometric through to the Hellenistic period Spartan burial practices were in many ways similar to those found in Argos and Corinth. The match between Sparta and Argos is sufficiently close as to suggest that one community influenced the other or perhaps that there was an ongoing mutual diffusion of customs.

It is, in fact, in many ways inherently misleading to compare Spartan burial practice with that of the ‘typical’ Greek polis because there was significant variation in the burial practices of Greek communities at any given point in time. This is as one would expect. The number and complexity of the customs that collectively make up burial practice – inhumation versus cremation, tomb types, tomb orientations, the prevalence of secondary burials, the presence/absence and nature of grave-goods, to name but a few – create a large array of possible combinations of customs and hence an equally large array of burial practices. As a result, the specific constellation of funerary customs in any given Greek community in a specific period of time is likely to be, if not unique, then certainly distinctive. Conceptions about ‘typical’ burial customs have been driven in large part by boldly extrapolating from the large and well-studied collection of evidence for Athens. However, as should now be clear, that process of extrapolation is problematic.Footnote ⁶²

Indeed, it is becoming increasingly apparent that there were significant divergences in burial practices within Attica itself throughout the Classical period. In the present context, it is particularly important to note that ongoing excavations in many Attic demes have revealed what are here termed intracommunal burials. For example, in a recent treatment of new evidence from the deme of Acharnai, Chryssanthi Papadopoulou observes the following.

After reviewing evidence for a Classical cemetery adjacent to the agora in the deme of Halai Aixonidai, Papadopoulou goes on to conclude that, ‘the placement of the dead next to the living in Athens [sc. Attica] up until the eighth century bc is not treated as unusual … It appears that it should not be treated as unusual when encountered in the Classical period either’ (Papadopoulou Reference Papadopoulou2017, 165).