From ca. 1600 – 1000 BC, builders across southern Greece crafted thousands of rock-cut chamber tombs similar to earlier and contemporary ‘beehive’ tholos tombs. Both tomb styles were designed with... Show moreFrom ca. 1600 – 1000 BC, builders across southern Greece crafted thousands of rock-cut chamber tombs similar to earlier and contemporary ‘beehive’ tholos tombs. Both tomb styles were designed with multiple uses in mind, filling with the remains of funerals forgotten over generations of reuse. In rare cases, the tombs were used once or seemingly not at all, cleaned thoroughly or sealed and abandoned entirely. Rather than focus on the missing or muddled record of funeral and post-funeral activities, this book re-examines Mycenaean tomb architecture and the decisions that guided it. From minimalistic to monumental, builders designed tombs with forethought to how commissioners and witnesses would react and remember them. Patterns suggest that memories of what tombs should look like heavily influenced new construction toward recurring shapes and appropriate scales. The wider debates over cost from ‘architectural energetics’ and perception in Aegean mortuary behaviour are thus revisited. Both can find common purpose in labour measured through a relative index and collective memory—how labourers and patrons saw their work. That metric for comparison lies within a median standard: in this instance, tombs expressed in terms of correlative shape and simple labour investment of the earth and rock moved to create them. Show less
This study generates a new vision on El Chorro de Maíta, an exceptional archaeological context in northeast Cuba of great importance for the understanding of early colonial spaces in the Caribbean.... Show moreThis study generates a new vision on El Chorro de Maíta, an exceptional archaeological context in northeast Cuba of great importance for the understanding of early colonial spaces in the Caribbean. The research adopts a multidisciplinary approach which evaluates numerous lines of archaeological evidence and historical data. The theoretical basis is that domination plays a key role in the structuring of relationships among individuals, cultures and societies. Basic forms of domination are identified in El Chorro de Maíta, a village of indios encomendados: people forced to work for the Spaniards in exchange for religious and “civilizing” instruction. The cemetery, located in the village, reveals an ethnic diversity that includes indigenous people from different regions, mestizos and an African individual. A diversity of identities is also revealed, some constructed through adaptations to colonial life (‘indi ans’), and others through ethnic and cultural mixing. This ethnogenesis, as well as the syncretic peculiarities in some burials, and the very in-between nature of the cemetery itself as a colonial product where indigenous and Christian traditions are conserved and combined, represents a context of emergent sixteenth century transculturation, in which indians are active social agents fighting for their survival. Show less
