Vlachou Vicky
University of Athens
Late Geometric burials and pits from Oropos
One area of the ancient city of Oropos, the so-called Main Quarter, has been connected basically with metalworking and identified with an industrial quarter. Inside the limits of this habitation, and all around the buildings, a total of forty-two (42) pits, have been excavated and indicated on the plan with Latin numerals (III-VII, IX-XXXIII, XXXV, XXXVII-XLIII). The excavations have been conducted here during 1985-1987 under the direction of the late Aliki Dragona and resumed from 1996 under the direction of professor Alexandros Mazarakis-Ainian.
Some of the pits mentioned above, are related with the buildings and the metalworking or other activities, and did not have a burial use.
The burial pits, and a few pits with ancillary use to the burial pits, will be the subjects of this announcement. They are all contemporary with the period of use of the industrial quarter, and are related with the successive chronological phases of the buildings. They form small groups, close to the buildings.
Most of the pits, are considered as burial pits. Three types have so long been identified: small children were buried in coarse ware, set on the side on the bottom of shallow pits, with a depth of about 0.40m. (εγχυτρισμοί) or more exceptionally (only in two cases) small children were buried on the bottom of shallow shaft grave. These types of burial were extremely poor. Only in few cases other finds except the coarse ware, are related with the burial.
The majority of the burial pits consist of big profound pits, with a depth of about 1.50m. They contained, a coarse jar, like the εγχυτρισμοί, set on the side, in which, apart from one pit, no bones where detected. Few of those pits contained some small vases but no urn. Above, around and below the coarse jar numerous vase fragments were found, only in some cases entire vases. Animal bones both calcinated and unburnt and seashells where found inside the pits, probably the rests of funerary meals near the grave during the burial ceremony. The upper part of the pit was filed with earth. In one case, three pits were covered by the same pile of stones. The final interpretation of those pits is still uncertain. A suggestion is that they might have been εγχυτρισμοί of infants, probably dead during or soon after the birth.
Three shallow pits contained the rests of primary pyrai and another the deposit of a pyra. It is not yet certain whether those pyrai can be the rests of funeral meals associated with the burial pits.
A skeleton presumably of a young person, placed in a contracted position was associated neither with a shaft nor with grave offerings. Two cist tombs were also excavated, one totally empty and disturbed, the other contained few drinking vessels and the neck of an amphora. These are the only examples of tombs apart from the pits within the habitation. It is difficult to conclude whether these tombs also, can be tombs of children, as in the two shaft tombs.
Child burials inside the settlement are common in Eretria. During the Geometric and Subgeometric periods, children were inhumed in pithoi and amphorae inside the settlement, usually outside the houses. Although the practice of children inhumation in coarse ware inside the settlement is also known from other areas, the type of the deep pits is quite uncommon.
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