RETOUR SUR LES «BONE ENCLOSURES» DE VROKASTRO : ELEMENTS DE DATATION ET PRATIQUES FUNERAIRES

Abstract

This study aims to make new insights into the twelve bone enclosures discovered at Vrokastro (Eastern Crete) by E. Hall. When she published her excavations, she concentrated her analyses on the material from the settlement and the Chamber Tombs, but the bone enclosures were eclipsed because the finds were less impressive and in a worse state. Following E. Hall, historiography states that the Chamber tombs were prior to the Bone enclosures, as inhumations prior to cremations.

As the ceramics were less numerous, poorly accounted for, and now mainly lost, our study concentrates on the case of the small finds, notably the fibulae, which are still available and numerous for each bone enclosure, including the enchytrismoi.

This leads us to make some new observations about the local funerary practices of Vrokastro and to offer a more accurate and balanced view of the history of the settlement. This study reveals that it is not accurate to systematically oppose chamber tombs/inhumations and bone enclosures/cremations after SM. During the Protogeometric period, cremation and inhumation rituals were simultaneously available in time and space to the people of Vrokastro. It is also true that during this period we find the ferments of the urban expansion occurring at the end of the IX^th century BC.