eTheses Repository - University of Birmingham

people who were not directly involved to watch from a distance. Those organising and taking
part in proceedings probably had very little control about who could do this and perhaps had
very little desire to exert any either. In addition, although there is a stream relatively close to
the site, it is not prominent, and the association with water is not apparent, as it had been in
the LBA. Again, the openness of the landscape may have facilitated the importance of the
sky, its expanse very evident as one moves from place to place on the plain. Rather than
water as the transporter of the soul, it may have been the air, enhancing the ethereal quality of
the spirit of the deceased (cf. Goodison 1989, p.179).
The only contemporary literary evidence that we have for attitudes towards their dead of those
living in the 8th century is Homer. Sourvinou-Inwood (1995, p.116), after full consideration
of the context in which the Homeric stories were transmitted and told, argues that at this
period there is an apparent belief in the dead as retaining reason and wisdom as opposed to the
earlier belief in the witless dead. The change from multiple to single burials may go some
way to support this. If the spirit retained its sense, it would not be wise to interfere with its
remains with which it may have kept a connection. Multiple burials by their very nature were
revisited to deposit more remains, often with the earlier burials being disturbed as at many
LBA chamber and tholos tombs. There is no evidence of multiple burials in the graves of this
site, despite the fact that there are cases of two or more in ‘simple’ grave types of the
Mycenaean period (Lewartowski 1995, p.104). However, even if the burials possessed single
interments, revisiting the graves was not prohibited. Presumably, they were also marked out
in some way, perhaps by a small mound of stones or earth: the pithoi reported by Hodkinson
& Hodkinson (1981, p.148) had evidence of a covering of stones as grave markers.
Whatever the grave marker, the fact that the dead were buried in a specific place meant that
they still had a material presence and occupied a location in space. When that space was
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