101 ways of creating collective burials. The exceptional Cretan tombs in the context of the 3rd Millennium BC Mediterranean

Abstract

Large collective tombs2 seem to be a popular feature across the Mediterranean and most of continental Europe from the end of the Neolithic into the first phases of the Bronze Age (ca. 4000-2000 BC). Collective burial deposits were just one of the several types of interments that formed the complex funerary customs of the period, but their significance at this time is unparalleled in European history since. Amongst the popularity of collective tombs in the 4th and 3rd millennium BC, Crete proves to be exceptional due to the almost exclusive use of tombs with commingled burial deposits for more than a millennium (ca. 3200-1800 BC; see figure 7.1 for chronology), which contrasts starkly against the burial variability in most other Mediterranean regions. At the same time, this is a millennium in which the island’s communities saw major changes in their size and complexity with significant developments in demography, settlement patterns, economic and political organisation. One cannot but feel that the effort and resources put on the Cretan collective tombs mark them as an important social arena at the forefront of these changes and that the exceptional burial record may have played a role in the development and sustainability of complex societies in the island at a moment when these were extremely rare across the Mediterranean. This article analyses this Cretan exceptionality in its Mediterranean context by reviewing the newly published bioarchaeological and taphonomic data from the tombs and contextualising it within the rich knowledge of the funerary record that has been developed in the last two decades