eTheses Repository - University of Birmingham

ties to the living society and how the material record reflects this. Van Gennep (1960)
describes the funeral process as a rite of passage composed of a tripartite structure: the rite of
separation; the rite de marge; and the rite of aggregation (see also Morris 1987, p.31-32).
This tripartite structure is involved in other life changes, such as coming of age and marriage,
not just death. This is a particularly functional way of viewing the funeral and describes it as
a way of playing out, clarifying and reaffirming the ideal norms of the group. In a similar
way, Bloch (in Morris, 1987 p.33) sees the funeral as a way of legitimising the position of
certain groups within society, especially in traditional types of society where authority is seen
to derive from a divinity or from nature. Following on from this, Bloch ascertains that in
egalitarian societies, or in those where authority comes from outside the group, the need for
such ritual is negated. This reasoning has been disputed by some (e.g. Van Gennep 1960,
193), and it is argued that the negation of such ritual applies only to modern western societies
where the tripartite ritual structure can be seen to have declined.
Ideas relating to funerary rites as a way of legitimising social groups, reaffirming hierarchies
and restating ideal norms, such as those above, have underlined the idea of tombs as
indicators of the social status and wealth of the individuals buried within them. They have
also supported the idea that the material remains of funerary ritual can be considered as an
expression of the predominant economic system of the group to which the dead individual
once belonged. In relation to LBA Greece for example, Voutsaki (1992 cited in Sjoberg
2004, p.83) considers the increasing use of the chamber tomb in the Late Helladic IIIB period,
but with smaller and poorer types, as reflecting an increasingly hierarchical society, where
more wealth was channelled into palaces and less into burial. This is somewhat different,
though not necessarily mutually exclusive, to the conclusions of Cavanagh & Mee (1998,
p.126, p.234) who propose that the same phenomenon was due to legislation made against
ostentatious aristocratic burial by rulers who felt threatened. Alternatively Sjoberg (2004,
162