30 - Beyond the General and the Particular: Rethinking Death, Memory and Belonging in Early Bronze Age Crete

Summary

This chapter focuses on the reinvestigation of the Early Bronze Age (EBA) funerary evidence from the Crete Island. A long-standing consensus within the confines of the discipline has been that throughout the EBA, communal tombs were among the main points of reference by which the Cretan landscape and a person's place in that landscape could be defined. The advent of the EBA period on the island of Crete coincides with the appearance of two distinct funerary traditions. The first concerns mainly the south-central region of the Asterousia Mountains and involves a novel architectural type. The second is attested along several parts of the north coast and involves mainly clusters of small-sized cist or rock-cut tombs, a funerary tradition that, both in terms of morphology and material culture. The chapter examines the foregoing structural transformations in conjunction with development of the late stages of the third millennium BC, namely the appearance of burial containers.