Part V. Four Tombs

This is a true cist burial, in that the skeleton, of an infant, was placed in a stone casket. The casket is a single block of poros, roughly hollowed out until the requisite depth was reached. Its dimensions are 0·60 m. × 0·50 m., but the block is not a perfect rectangle by any means. The depth is c. 0·30 m. Underneath the block a group of seven roughly circular shallow holes and two shallow rectangular depressions are to be seen; the only explanation I can suggest for these is that it was perhaps originally intended to hollow out the block from this side. Over the casket two blocks of sandstone were placed; both have a shallow depression underneath. At the west end of the casket and closely adjoining it lay a triangular block of poros about 0·48 m. wide and 0·35 m. high (only partially visible on Plate 43). This, from the similarity of material and workmanship, seems to have had some connection with the burial. Could it have been a small unsculptured stele? The unsculptured stelai from Schliemann's Grave Circle are triangular at the top.The burial lies partially over a wall which may have been intended as a boundary for the Prehistoric Cemetery area, thus showing that the height of the wall mentioned can have been no higher at this point at the time of this burial, and suggesting that, if in fact this is an enclosure wall, it was not felt desirable to bury the dead outside the enclosure, either in the case of this burial or in that of the Geometric cist and pithos burials, and arguing some continuity in the cult of the dead. The wall itself, so far as has yet been ascertained, cannot be later than the L.H. IIIA period, and is probably considerably earlier.