DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.9189#0035
EDITH H. HALL-EXCAVATIONS IN EASTERN CRETE.
71
found in both Middle Minoan I and Middle Minoan III jars.
At Vrokastro also, were found this year two child burials in jars
—not inverted—adjacent to house walls. Such sporadic cases
are of great value in helping to modify the discrepancy between
the jar burials of the Sphoungaras cemetery and the widely
divergent methods of other Cretan cemeteries, for they indicate
that in more than one place and at more than one time was it
the custom to bury children in jars. A possible hypothesis is
that in no period of Cretan culture was it foreign to Minoan
custom to bury the children in jars, but that in the three periods
specified the practice* was extended to adults as well as to chil-
dren. Another possible hypothesis is that the poor only buried
the dead in jars. This is the custom in some districts of China
today; the poorer people for the purpose of economizing space,
squeeze the bodies of their dead into jars. The citizens of
Gournia, however, seem too prosperous to warrant such an
explanation. In spite of the fact that a certain amount of con-
servatism would be expected in regard to burying the dead, the
truth seems to be that the Cretans of the Bronze Age experi-
mented a good deal in this matter. The following table (p. 73)
shows the different kind of burials found up to date in Crete; in
some cases the cemeteries are on steep hillsides like Sphoungaras
where tunnels were driven almost horizontally into the hill, in
other cases, like the long narrow burial rooms of Palaikastro
they are on nearly level ground.
The occasional appearance of this crude method of burial
side by side with other more civilized practices is not an isolated
phenomenon. In Egypt the custom of " interment under pots
appears in upper Egypt at the close of the predynastic period
and is uniformly continuous through the early dynasties to the
advent of the Fourth. It is associated with other early modes of
burial. As a practice it is not common but constant; nor is it
demonstrably representative of poorer or richer people or of a
differing element of race."1
1 Garstang, Tombs of the Third Egyptian Dynasty at Reqdqnah and Bet Khallaf, 1904,
PP- 50-57-
71
found in both Middle Minoan I and Middle Minoan III jars.
At Vrokastro also, were found this year two child burials in jars
—not inverted—adjacent to house walls. Such sporadic cases
are of great value in helping to modify the discrepancy between
the jar burials of the Sphoungaras cemetery and the widely
divergent methods of other Cretan cemeteries, for they indicate
that in more than one place and at more than one time was it
the custom to bury children in jars. A possible hypothesis is
that in no period of Cretan culture was it foreign to Minoan
custom to bury the children in jars, but that in the three periods
specified the practice* was extended to adults as well as to chil-
dren. Another possible hypothesis is that the poor only buried
the dead in jars. This is the custom in some districts of China
today; the poorer people for the purpose of economizing space,
squeeze the bodies of their dead into jars. The citizens of
Gournia, however, seem too prosperous to warrant such an
explanation. In spite of the fact that a certain amount of con-
servatism would be expected in regard to burying the dead, the
truth seems to be that the Cretans of the Bronze Age experi-
mented a good deal in this matter. The following table (p. 73)
shows the different kind of burials found up to date in Crete; in
some cases the cemeteries are on steep hillsides like Sphoungaras
where tunnels were driven almost horizontally into the hill, in
other cases, like the long narrow burial rooms of Palaikastro
they are on nearly level ground.
The occasional appearance of this crude method of burial
side by side with other more civilized practices is not an isolated
phenomenon. In Egypt the custom of " interment under pots
appears in upper Egypt at the close of the predynastic period
and is uniformly continuous through the early dynasties to the
advent of the Fourth. It is associated with other early modes of
burial. As a practice it is not common but constant; nor is it
demonstrably representative of poorer or richer people or of a
differing element of race."1
1 Garstang, Tombs of the Third Egyptian Dynasty at Reqdqnah and Bet Khallaf, 1904,
PP- 50-57-