Toward
the end of the third millennium B.C.E., Minoan funerary customs
changed, and people began to favor the use of clay receptacles—pithoi or
larnakes—for the bodies of the dead. This article offers a
comprehensive study of the funerary pithoi of the period, comprising a
review of the available material and its classification, distribution,
and dating,
the relation of container to tomb types, and the specific
use of pithoi within funerary ritual. It also assesses the importance of
pithoi as an investment in terms of the material wealth that they
represent and the knowledge of the complex techniques of handling dead
bodies that they require. Finally, it examines the symbolic connotations
of the pithos and argues that its wide adoption was part of a general
turn toward the concept of the regeneration of life. This concept
shifted the emphasis of the funerary realm toward the social
dimension—namely, toward the reallocation of the roles and resources of
the dead among the living. Such a shift helped people come to terms with
contemporary social reality and shaped the agency of emerging elites,
which led to the establishment of the first Minoan palaces and
transformed Crete from a series of kin-based communities to a group of
proto-states.
Πηγή : http://www.ajaonline.org/article/1762
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