loyal wives or just concubines..? - ddd.uab.cat · resumen: la famosa tumba del heroon de lefkandi...

Abstract: The well known Heroon at the Toumba cemetery consist of ashaft housing of two very rich and apparently simultaneous burials, amale cremation and a female inhumation, assumed as the woman beingthe warrior's consort probably sacrificed during his husband's funerals.In this paper I argue is that if we can trust the anthropological identifi-cation and the simultaneity of both depositions, then we can considerthese women as concubines better than wives, if we compare this evi-dence with contemporary archaeological funerary sites and the with theancient Greek oral and literary tradition.Resumen: La famosa tumba del Heroon de Lefkandi consiste en un pozoque alberga dos enterramientos muy ricos y aparentemente simultáneos,una incineración masculina y una inhumación femenina, que ha sidoasumida como la correspondiente a la esposa del guerrero incinerado yque había sido probablemente sacrificada en el transcurso de losfunerales del marido. El argumento que defiendo es que, si podemosfiarnos de las identificaciones antropológicas de las tumbas y de la simul-taneidad de los enterramientos dobles, entonces no puede tratarse deesposas, sino de concubinas, si los comparamos con otros yacimientosfunerarios contemporáneos y con la tradición oral y literaria de la antiguaGrecia.Resum: La famosa tomba de l’Heroon de Lefkandi consisteix en un pouque hostatja dos enterraments molt rics i en aparença simultanis: unaincineració masculina i una inhumació femenina, assumida aquesta comla corresponent a l’esposa del guerrer incinerat i probablement sacrifica-da durant els funerals del marit. L’argument que es defén aquí és que, sipodem finar-nos de les identificacions antropològiques de les tombes i dela simultaneïtat dels enterraments dobles, llavors no pot tractar-se d’es-poses, sinó de concubines, en comparació amb d’altres jaciments funer-aris contemporanis i amb la tradició oral i literària de la Grècia antiga.

Interpreting household practicesBarcelona, 21-24 november 2007Treballs d’Arqueologia 13 (2007): 175-197

LOYAL WIVES OR JUST CONCUBINES..?

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Introduction: Double graves andsacrifices

The well known Heroon at theToumba cemetery, dated at theMPG (1000-950 B.C.), consists of ashaft housing two very rich andapparently simultaneous burials, amale cremation and a female inhu-mation. Four horses were sacri-ficed during funerary ritesand deposited in anothershaft close by. Male’s asheswere placed inside a Cypriotbronze amphora, which wasan antique, together with hisweapons and accompaniedby the inhumed corpse of afemale. She was wearingimpressive jewels, amongthem a gold pendant, whichwas also an antique, at least900 or 800 hundred yearsolder than her last owner.The double burial was placedinside a monumental build-ing, perhaps the warrior’shousehold that was deliber-ately destroyed during hisexequies. Because thewomen’s arms were folded,her hands and feet crossedand an iron knife with ivorypommel was laid beside herhead, Mervin Popham

(Popham et al. 1993; Popham 1994;Lemos 2002: 167), assumed that thewoman was the warrior’s consortand that she was probably sacri-ficed during his husband’s funerals(Fig. 1). Thus the archaeologicalrecord suggests a simultaneousburial, that is, both of them wereburied at the same time. The heroonstood up on a prominent point of

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Fig. 1

the landscape, and it gave birth tothe burial area of a ruling class inits neighbourhood.

In tune with Popham’s view,Catling (1994: 125; 1996a: 517-537)interpreted the Submicenaean(1075-1025 B.C.) Knossos cemeterycremations 200 to 202, belongingto a warrior male and to two femaleadults plus a baby respectively, as asingle funerary unit (Fig. 2). Pit200 was the cremation of a youngnon sexed adult, but considered tobe probably a woman, in view ofthe jewels included as grave goods.Among them one bronze dressingpin with wheel-shaped head ofItalian type, so that the crematedperson could have been a foreigner.Pit 201 contained a great amount ofcremated bones, more than 2.3 kg,that were attributed by the anthro-pologist to two adults -male andfemale, plus a possible baby. Gravegoods consisted of weapons, aCypriot wheeled stand, an ivoryquiver and a boar’s-tusk helmet,which was an antique, a probableheirloom. Eventually pit 202, con-tained nothing apart from somesmall fragments of cremated bones.Catling (ibidem) interpreted thethree pits as parts of the samefunerary unit, and speculated with

the possibility that pits 200-201were simultaneous cremations. Heeven suggested that the man diedfirst and the two women and thebaby could have been thrown tothe male’s pyre during his obse-quies.

The aforementioned author(Catling 1994:126) further pro-posed the same explanation for themale/female cremation nº40 at theCypriot cemetery of KourionKaloriziky, dated to Late CypriotIIIB (1125/1100 B.C.) and themale/female inhumation tombXXVIII of Tiryns, and made thepoint that all of them were founda-tional graves, erected on significantsites connected both with the pastand the future, and that they werenot reused, but gave way to agraveyard widely used afterwards.

Anyway these two last examplesseem to be less straightforward tome. Thus, the Kourion nº40 tombwas partially plundered by tomblooters robbers and later on dug upby McFadden of the PennsylvaniaMuseum Expedition (McFadden1954). It consisted of a shaft con-taining a bronze urn filled withcremated bones, belonging afterthe anthropologist, to a woman

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between 50 and 70 years of age. Anurn similar to that of the woman’s

cremation had been previouslyconfiscated to one of the robbers,


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Fig. 2

together with a magnificent goldsceptre, which was an antique (ib.1954:134), and two bronze tripods.After one of the robbers’ testimony,some cremated bones, apparentlyhuman were found inside. So,McFadden (ib. 1954:134), assumedthat there were two people, a man

and a woman laying at Kourion 40,and, due to the lavish grave goodsan the exceptional sceptre, theywere surely a king and his queen(Fig. 3).

Yet, extraordinary as the Kourionnº40 tomb is, there is not archaeo-

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Fig. 3

logical certainty, either that therewere two people of different sexburied together, or that the womanwould have been sacrificed duringher husband’s funerals.

The last case mentioned byCatling, was that of the tombXXVIII by Tyrins (Verdelis 1963:10and followings), dated at theSubmicenaean/ Protogeometrictransition (ca. 1025-1000 B.C.). Itwas a cist grave, excavated close bythe main building of the Tyrins

Acropolis, i.e. on a prominentplace, and held two inhumed peo-ple, one of them with warrior’sgrave goods, and a second corpsewithout grave goods and laying at alightly deeper level, that was inter-preted as having been buried at anearlier time. Although no anthro-pological identification of thecorpses took place, Verdelis(1963:55), thought the secondcorpse could belong to a womanand the first one, who was buriedwith weapons, to a male. Anyway,


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Fig. 4

it should be highlighted that thetwo burials were not simultane-ously done (Fig. 4).

A further case of a double andsimultaneous grave comes from theErechteion Street, south of theAthens Acropolis, where fourteenburials were discovered. One ofthem was a double cremationinside the same urn and dated tothe EPG. (ca. 1025-1000 B.C.)Anthropological inquiry identifiedthe remains as belonging to a cou-ple of male and female teenagers,around eighteen years of age.Although the excavator thoughtthat they could have been a brotherand a sister who died together,nevertheless Lemos (2002:154), inview of the Toumba Heroon, consid-ers that a kind of suttee could not beruled out.

In Italy, Peroni (1996:485-7) andPacciarelli (1998:38), took as wellthat view. The first author (citedby Bartoloni 2003:97), mentionedthe cases of some double(male/female) or triple (including ababy) tombs dated to the 9th cen-tury B.C. from the Villanovannecropolis of Quattro Fontaniliand Grotta Gramisccia, where agreat amount of cremated bones

have been anthropologically identi-fied (Berardinetti & Drago 1997;Bartoloni et al. 1997:89-100).Bartoloni (2003:97-98) objects onthe contrary, that there are notproofs enough of human sacrificesin the course of princely funerals.She further suggests that in thecase of Grotta Gramiccia tomb 60,the presence of two different pits,holding respectively a male and afemale cremations inserted in aunique shaft grave, could be betterexplained by the reopening of afamiliar grave in order to rejoin acouple in the same tomb. There aremany other cases of graves’ reopen-ing, well attested archaeologicallyat the time as L’Osteria del L’Osa(Bietti-Sestieri 1997), Este(Vanzetti 1992:158), or the VillaBruschi Fagari necropolis (Trucco2006:97-98). Anyway, even at VillaBruschia, there are four caseswhere after Trucco (ib.:98-99), asacrifice could not be ruled out(Fig. 4). They happen to bemale/female cremations, with theirbones mixed and having a similarcolouring, what means that theywere cremated at the same temper-ature and, surely on the same pyre.Tomb 130 is extremely interesting,since the bones were identified asbelonging to an old man around

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35/45 of age and to a young womanof about 18 to 25 years old.Bartoloni herself admits (ib.2003:98) that some cases as the oneof a female cremation superim-posed to a male one at the excep-tional Vetulonia’s shaft grave 1,could not be excluded as a sacri-fice, in view of the sceptre andother emblems of rule that accom-panied the deceased man, althoughit could also be a later, secondarydeposition.

Wives and concubines

My point is that if we can trust theanthropological identification andthe simultaneity of both deposi-tions, and if we can exclude from aforensic point of view natural caus-es for the simultaneity of bothdeaths, as for instance, accidents orplagues, then we should considerthese women as concubines betterthan wives, because from theBronze Age on, we have funeraryevidence of high status womencompatible with the existence of asystem of dowry and complex agri-culture (Goody 1973, 1976; 1984and 1990; Ruiz-Gálvez 1994). Insuch a way, warriors and rulerswould have married high statuswomen, belonging to an equal or

even higher rank families and ableto transmit rights to their off-spring’s on their familiar property,including sometimes claims to theruling office. Therefore it seems tome very improbable that suchnoble women, that sometimes as inAthens exerted as priestesses(Langdon 2005), could ever havebeen sacrificed.

In several books Goody (1973, 1976;1984; 1990) has dealt with the dif-ferences between simple and com-plex agriculture and their relationwith either a bridewealth system,where women neither inherit nortransmit property rights to theiroffspring and a dowry system intowhich, women transmit rights totheir descendant on the familiarheritage, or could even inherit it inabsence of a male heir. He (ib.:1990) maintains that there arearchaeological as well as literaryproofs that, at least since theBronze Age, a system of dowry wasat work in Eurasia and, what ismore important, that the develop-ment of a complex agriculture,including the plough, irrigationand/or specialized livestock rais-ing, promoted differences of rich-ness and rank and the use ofendowed daughters to sign up


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alliances among rich families andto join land properties. Of not less-er importance is the fact that suchwomen could inherit and transmitthe right to the ruling office. Suchwere the cases of Eleanor, Duchessof Aquitaine and Guyènne,Countess of Poitou and Queen con-sort of both France and England,who transmitted to the EnglishCrown rights on her French pos-sessions; or Maria de Molina, firstQueen consort and then Queenregent of Castile and León andowner of the lordship of Molina deAragón, which through her becamepart of the Castilian Crown; orIsabella of France, Queen consortof England and member of theHouse of Capet, from whom Henrythe III of the house Plantagenetderived his claims to the Crown ofFrance, which resulted in the socalled Hundred Years’ War; or,finally Marie Thérèse of Austria,Queen consort of France andgrandmother of the first BourbonKing of Spain, Philip the Fifth,whom she transmitted the right tothe Spanish Crown.

Unfortunately we do not havewritten records for that period inEurope. Nevertheless we do havethem for the Second and First

Millennium B.C. Near East(Liverani 2003:257-64; 1987). Therewe learn that royal intermarriageswere preceded and, sometimes fol-lowed by political agreements, thenature of which varied dependingon whether both partners wereequals or not, or whether one of thekingdoms was a vassal or an ally.But even if the bride would nothave a political role in her groom’skingdom and sometimes wouldspend her life confined in the royalharem, she in a way was left as apawn of the brotherhood betweenher native and her adopting coun-try. So coming back to my point, Ican hardly imagine these royalwives being sacrificed at their hus-band pyre.

Suttee and Hecatomb

Regarding to the suttee hypothesisproposed by Popham in the case ofthe Toumba heroon, we do not havewritten proofs of such a practiceneither in the Near East texts norlater, in the Greek or Roman ones.According to Goody (1990:48-49,184-187), although the suttee, that is,the immolation of the faithful wifein her husband’s pyre, existed insome parts of China and India, nev-ertheless, it has always been very

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rare, and was eventually abolishedin India by the British in the 19thcentury. On the contrary, it was ausual practice both in China andIndia, that high status widows sel-dom would marry again. That wasdue to the fact that they not onlyretained their dowry in widow-hood, but they have a right of beingeconomically supported in chargeof the estate. Even in the seldomcases they would marry a secondtime, although they would losetheir dower, they would still retaintheir dowry (Goody 1990:48-49;202). The aforementioned author(ib.: 117, 184,198 and 203) pointedout that the female widowhoodwas morally sanctioned as well bythe Neoconfucianism, that consid-ered a second wedding nearly anadultery, as for the ‘sâstra, theHindu’s orthodox law. InTambiah’s words “in India the giftof a virgin accompanied by a dowryappears to be associated with theideal of monogamy, an ideal that issymbolized in the notion of hus-band and wife being a united andinseparable pair which reached itultimate elaboration in the institu-tion of suttee” (Tambiah 1973:65).Very interestingly, Goody (ib.:117and 187), wrote that those rulesconcerned the rich widows but not

the poor ones who, usually marriedagain. And the reason was quitestraightforward: while rich womenwere endowed by their father, thepoor ones received an indirectdowry from theirs groom’s family.Thus the dowry was linked to thefemale’s rights of property, inheri-tance and rank, while it was not sowith bridewealth (Tambiah 1973:64). So it seems to me quite openwhy moral law sanctioned the highrank wife’s perpetual monogamy,thus the dowry which belonged tothe widow and not to her late hus-band, would be alienated fromtheir offspring in case she marriedagain. I even wonder whether therewere not economic reasons behindmost of the suttee self-immolations.Thus, even for certain rich families,the commitment of perpetual sup-port from the familiar estate to awoman, who will never be preg-nant again, but should retain herrank and living standards whilekeeping her dowry, and that couldin a future alienate it by gettingmarried again, could have been per-ceived as a risk for the familiar pat-rimony. So, it might have happenedthat some widows were persuadedby their own families to join theirlate husband pyre as a proof of loy-alty and heroism sanctioned by the


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divinity. This is, of course, myhypothesis, not Goody’s. So if youdisagree, it is me not him, the onewho should be blamed for it.

On the contrary, concubines, evenif they descended of a noble linageenjoyed a lower status. Althoughthe children of a concubine couldinherit and even becomeenthroned, in cases of polygyny ashappened with some Asian kings,wives and concubines were hierar-chically ranked and enjoyed differ-entiated rights both on the proper-ty and on the succession (Tambiah1973:65). Some concubines wereslaves or as it were the case both ofHomer’s Briseis or Cassandra,became concubines as a result of anarm conflict, were considered war’sbooty and therefore turned intocommodities, alienable things, tro-phies or objects of display, butwere not seen as human beings.Therefore they could have beensacrificed in a display of richnessand power, i.e. a hecatomb, by themembers of an emergent lineagewho needed to make their claims tosuccession to the political office.

Thus, as Gregory explains(1982:71), gifts are inalienable thingsexchanged among relatives, while

commodities are alienable thingsexchanged among strangers. Thatis, and translating Gregory’s ideas,bridegrooms are gifts, inalienablepeople slaves are commodities, andtherefore, alienable things whocould be sacrificed in a hecatomb, apublic display of power and rich-ness even if as Cassandra orEumaeus, were descendant of royalfamilies.

Warriors and husbands

Let’s have a look to Homer’s textsin order to strengthen my point. Atthe Odyssey we come across withreal women, of blood and flesh, asPenelope, Eurycleia, Helen or theyoung Nausicaa, all of them lovedand respected by Odysseus. Somuch so, that in 19th century, a cer-tain Samuel Butler claimed a femaleauthorship for the Poem, and sug-gested that she could have been apoetess from Trapani in Sicily, whomight have self-depicted as thecharacter of Nausicaa. Even thewriter Robert Graves took in the20th century the same view in hisnovel “Homer’s daughter” (Olmos2003:297). As Olmos points out(ib.:295-326), women are promi-nent in the book; Calypso andCirce represent female’ s seductive

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powers; Helen and Penelope arefaithful wives and efficient house-keepers and weavers. Nausicaameans the youth and the inno-cence. Finally, Eurycleia, the oldOdysseus’ nanny, is a most affec-tionate character. The Poem, forthe good or the bad, is plenty offeminine points of view.

If we turn now our sight to theIliad, we will notice that femalecharacters do exist as well. Yet...,just by the Trojan side;Andromache, represents the best ofwives, and is tenderly loved byHektor (Iliad, VI.369, 390,440);Hekabe, Hektor’s mother, isalways fearing about her sons’ for-tune in the battlefield (Iliad VI.243,263,286,293; XXII.90 and 429);Helen, Priam’s beloved daughter inlaw... (Iliad III.161), complainsagainst her husband Paris’ cow-ardice (Iliad III. 421, 423)... Thereare other minor female characters,as for instance, the Trojan women(Iliad VI.243), or Teanus, Ciseus’daughter, and an Athena’s priestess(Iliad VI.297), or Etra and Climene,Helen’s ladies in waiting... (IliadIII.47), étc.

Nothing similar could be seen bythe Achaian side, where there are

not female characters, not femalehuman beings, just commodities(Vidal-Naquet 2002: 75-82).Excepting for the Goddesses, onlytwo female characters aredescribed by the Achaian side andboth of them are foreigners, eitherTrojan or from a Trojan ally king-dom: Criseis and Briseis. We knowvery little about the first of them.Just that her father is a prominentTrojan citizen and an Apollo’spriest, and that Agamemnon, hermaster and owner, to whom shewas assigned to him as a war’sbooty, should bring her back home,to prevent God’s anger. And hecomplains about taking that meas-ure, not because he loves her or atleast likes having her in his bed,but because he thinks is loosing apart of his owed booty. And thesame happens to Achilles, whocries bitterly after having beentaken his female booty, Briseis, byAgamemnon (Iliad II.345), notbecause he missed her, but becausehe has been dishonoured andhumiliated by having been dispos-sessed of a part of it was owed tohim (Vernant 1982:46). Just once inthe whole Poem we listen to Briseisspeaking, and we even know thatthere are other nameless captivewomen in the Achaian camp. In


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Iliad XIX.282-309, Briseis and theother female captives cry Patroclus’death and for their own bitter des-tiny. Briseis cries also due to herown memories about her husband’sdeath, of her family death and ofAchilles devastating her land andlooting her city. Patroclus, inBriseis own words, was her onlycomfort. The one who promisedher that Achilles should wash heroutraged honour by marrying herone day,. Yet... nothing let us thinkthat Achilles got any plan of marry-ing her slave... Because, as I havealready conveyed, Briseis as well asCriseis and the other anonymouscaptives were commoditizedthings... not human beings. Andcommodities as the slave were con-sidered could have been throwninto their master pyre as Achillesdid with the twelve male Trojancaptives sacrificed into Patroclus’spyre (Iliad XXIII.161).

Heroes tombs and house societies

Summing up, we have revised sev-eral cases -the Toumba Heroon, theKnossos cemetery tombs 200 to202, the Erechteion Street inAthens, four tombs of the VillaBruschi Fagari necropolis and, the

Vetulonia’s shaft grave 1, were wecan suspect that a double or tripleand simultaneous burial could havetaken place, and that it could haveincluded human sacrifices.

What similarities could we find outamong them? First, that they arelocated in prominent points on thelandscape; second, they were locat-ed in family plots or, as it were thecases of the Toumba heroon andKnossos 200-202, they were theoldest tombs in the necropolis andgave way at its funerary use after-wards; third, they were usually veryrich and prominent graves, and inthem males were buried with lavishgrave goods, including the charac-teristic insignias of a warrior and aruler; and four and more important,they appeared in a moment -theProtogeometric period in Greeceand the Villanovan/ early EtruscanPeriod in Italy, when a new socialstructure was emerging, one thatfrom an anthropological point ofview did neither fit with aChiefdom nor with a State.

González Rubial (2006) hasrecently used a model taken fromthe French anthropologist Lévi-Strauss, to define the politicalstructure of some Iron Age Iberian

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societies. It is the so-called housesocieties model, developed by theFrench anthropologist to define akind of hierarchical society that itis neither patrilineal nor matrilin-eal, and therefore defies classicalmodels of anthropological classifi-cation. Thus in them it is not thelineage but the house, or rather, thehousehold the basic axis on whichthe social organization is built. It isthe focus of ritual and sacrificialactivities and the arena for compe-tition, and is reflected in theemphasis on the house monumen-tality and richness, as well as onpower symbols or family relics andinheritances that perpetuate thesymbolic capital of the lineagethrough the household. And I thinkthat it could have been the case ofToumba, the burial area of a Greekelite of warriors and traders, thatemerged around a heroon (Popham1994), which recycled an apsidal

building, perhaps the household of anew divinized ancestor (Fig. 6).Thus not only the couple buriedunder the apsidal building, butmost of their rich descendantsburied close to them, included lav-ish grave goods as weapons andfine antiques in their burials. It isalso the case of some sub-Mycenaean Cretan warrior-graves,not only from the Knossos ceme-tery (Kanta 2003), that emulateHomeric rituals, have antiques,either inheritances or products ofplunders and sometimes wereburied in chamber tombs imitatingbuildings (Catling 1994, 1996b;Coldstream & Catling 1996).Lastly identical features are foundin Cypriot graves of the same age(Yon 1971; Karageorghis 2000).

It is also the kind of organizationthat we find in Villanovan and oldEtruscan/Lacial graves (between


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Fig. 6

the 9th/10th and 8th centuries BC),with depositions of prominentindividuals’ ashes, sometimeswrapped in rich clothes andaccompanied by some graters tomix cheese and wine followingHomeric rituals (Ridgway 1997),placed in house-shaped urns withroof-cornices (Bartoloni 2002:188-90), or urns covered by pottery mo-dels of helmets with a house cor-nice on top instead of crests(Berardinetti & Drago 1997:40)(Insert 5), together with weaponsand power symbols such as scep-tres and batons, as well as antiques(Ridgway 1997; Bartoloni 2002:85,143-44, 190, 214 and next; de Santis2005:84, 190; V.V.A.A. 2000). All ofthem, Greek, Cretan, Cypriot andItalian tombs emphasize the linkbetween death, houses, power andthe Past.

I would like also to call attentionto the fact that these rich gravesbelonged not only to powerfulmales or to powerful couples, butalso to rich single female burials.For instance some of the mostoutstanding tombs from theAthens’ Geometric Period (LordSmithson 1968; Coldstream 1995;Langdon 2005), Salamis’ tomb 1in Cyprus (Yon 1971) or a handful

of Villanovan, Early Etruscan andLacial tombs in Italy (Bartoloni2003:115-43). Thus, as Lévi-Strauss (cited by Gonzalez-Ruibal 2006), pointed out, housesocieties are neither patrilinealnor matrilineal ones, what, in myview, matches with a dowry sys-tem which is bilateral, that is, inwhich both lineages, mother’sand father’s are equally impor-tant, because both of them trans-mit rights on the heritage.

Cremation, hero-cult, heirloomsand sacrifices

Iliad’s Agammenon, is more aprimus inter pares than a paramountking in the sense of the Near Eastmonarchs. Achilles, the leader ofthe Myrmidons, Nestor orMenelaus... are also petty chiefs,condottiery, soldiers of fortune,always arguing about their share inthe war booty (See Iliad I and IX)and always competing amongthem. So, Patroclus’ funerals (Iliad,XXIII) are turned by Achilles intoan exhibition of his power andrichness and in a challenge toAgamemnon’s paramount authori-ty (Fig. 5).

Many authors have seen similari-

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ties between the type of societythat we come across with the hero-ic burials of the First Iron AgeGreece, Cyprus and Italy and theone described in Homer (Catling1994; Carter & Morris 1994;Ridgway 1997; D’Agostino 2000;Karageorghis 2000; Whitley 2002;Kanta 2003). On my side I haverecently suggested (Ruiz-Gálvezforthcoming), that the change of ritu-

al from inhumation to cremation,that took place in the Eastern andCentral Mediterranean at theBronze Age/Iron Age transition,could be related with the emer-gence of a new ruling class, whoneeded make claims on their rightto leadership. Because the crema-tion implies a way of divinization,thus it prevents the corruption ofthe body, and at the same time it

provides to the descendantan arena for exhibiting theirpower by destroying richnessand, in that way, claiming adivine or semi divine ancestryand their own rights to suc-cession.

It is in such a context, thatthose conspicuous tombs asthe Lefkandi heroon and manyothers could be, in my view,better understood. And it isalso under such a context,that human sacrifices mighthave taken place and had ameaning. Also under thatcontext it would make sensethe frequent presence ofantiques among the gravegoods of the heroic tombs.Thus antiques might havebeen considered agalmata,that quoting Grannisi (2004:


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Fig. 5

126): “are objects of value that mayembody at the same time a mythicand a religious aspect, but also asocial inner power”. So theseantiques could have been that part ofthe booty, described by Homer as“geraz” or part of the booty dueto a king or chief, as a materialexpression of the warrior’s“timh” or honour (See alsoVernant opus cit. 46).

Whitley (2002:226-227) suggestedthat some personal objects worn bythe Homeric characters or stored intheir treasure’s rooms were appre-ciated because they had a genealogy.These are the cases ofAgamemnon’s sceptre (IliadII.100), the helmet which Merionescovered Odysseus’s head with(Iliad, X.270), Achilles’ immortalhorses, (Illiad XXIII.270-287), orthe silver sewing basket thatAlcandra gave to Helen in Thebes(Odyssey IV.112). In every case,Homer describes who made theobject or bred the animal (always aGod or a reputed artisan), andwhom gods, kings or ancestors hadit been passed on to, before beinggiven to one of his characters.Therefore they are valuable objectssince they have their own biography(see also Perea 2003:163). In tune

with these ideas, I have suggestedsomewhere else (Ruiz-Gálvez 2005and forthcoming), that the antiqueslet as grave goods in tombs as theToumba heroon, were considered ashaving genealogy and thereforewould help their owners to cast anheroic, almost divine past for theirlineage. This idea would match ahouse society model, and the rise of anew leading class based on war andtrade, that needs to justify its rightto exert the power, inventing a hero-ic past for them.

As part of the invention of a pastand of claiming succession rights tothe political office, could also beunderstood the display of publicfunerals, the cremation of the bodyin a pyre, the destruction of wealthand the sacrifice of precious thingsas the slaves were. The higher theslaves’ status were -as happenedwith the twelve Trojan noblemensacrificed by Achilles intoPatroclus’ pyre (Iliad XXIII.161-82)-the better for the prestige of whomthe sacrifice were in charge of.

Echoes of Patroclus in Barbarianfunerals

I would like to end my paper bylooking at the most distant

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Mediterranean periphery, theNorthern Europe where, notwith-standing, indirect contactsthrough the so called Amber routehave been going on since the earlySecond Millennium B.C. (Shennan1982; Beck & Shennan 1991;Sherratt 1994). These became morestrengthen anyway, from the 8thcentury B.C., when Greek andPhoenicians established them-selves in the Tyrrhenian Sea andthe Etruscan evolved to an urbanand State society. A long distanceexchange route connected theBaltic and the Mediterranean Seasthrough which raw materials -met-als, amber, probably wood andfurs, and perhaps human beingscame down to the South, and luxu-ry products as wine and drinkingsets, textiles and perhaps humanbeings too, went up.

In such a context, some small chief-doms appeared in nodal areas con-necting and distributing goodsalong the route. One of them wasSeddin on the Elbe river in betweenCentral Europe and theScandinavian area. In 1899 a hugetumulus mound of 11 x 90 m wasdiscovered there. It was covering astone chamber with a false vaultand walls plastered in yellow and

red clay imitating a textile pattern.In the centre of it and inside a claypot was standing a bronze urn con-taining the cremated bones of athirty to forty years old man,together with rest of a marten orermine fur, jewels and weapons.Among his lavish grave goodsstands out a bronze amphora,because it was an import and wasmade in an Etruscan workshop ofVeii and therefore it was a rarity inthe area. Other cinerary urns wereaccompanying it and contained thebones of at least two young women(Kristiansen 1993; Thrane 1998). Asecond example comes fromKorshøj on South Funen (Thrane1998), where in the funerarymound of another local chief, bonesbelonging at least to two womenand a man were found. Although aslong as I know, there is not anthro-pological data on the possible con-temporaneousness of males andfemales cremations in bothmounds, anyway both barbarianburials seem to have been follow-ing the Homeric ritual of princelyexequies, and proves than alongthe routes, not only certain luxu-ries but also persons andMediterranean ways of conspicu-ous consumption were arriving tothe fringes of the Homeric World,


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and were emulated by local leaders.In both cases, Seddin and Korshøj,human beings deposited togetherwith the main male burial seem tohave been part of his grave goods,slaves and concubines, lesserhuman beings than commodities,but a way of publicly showing thestrength and power of the deadhousehold.

Addenda

In his book called The Archaeology ofdeath and burial, Mike Parker-Pearson describes an outstandingfuneral held in the 10th centuryA.D. at the trading post of Bulgaron the Middle Volga, as it wasdescribed by the Muslim tra-vellerand writer Ibn Faldan, who wit-nessed it. It happened to be theexequies of the leader of a group ofScandinavian merchants and war-rior based at Bulgar. The man wascremated on his boat, animals weresacrificed and one of his girl slavedjoined him at death (Parker-Pearson 2000:1-3)1.

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loyal wives or just concubines..? - ddd.uab.cat · resumen: la famosa tumba del heroon de lefkandi...

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