Lefkandi

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Archaeological site and cemetery on the island of Euboea, occupied between about 1500 BCE through 331 BCE. Lefkandi is thought to be one of the locations settled by the Mycenaeans after the Mediterranean Bronze Age Collapse. The occupation is unusual in that is seemed to have carried on with social structure when the rest of Greece was in the Greek Dark Ages.

The archaeological significance of the site was revealed in 1980 when a large mound was discovered to contain the remains of a man and a woman within a large structure called by some a heroön, or "hero's grave." There is some dispute as to whether the structure was in fact a heroön built to commemorate a hero or whether it was instead the grave of a couple who were locally important for other reasons. The building, approximately 50 meters long, foreshadows the monumental temple architecture that appeared with regularity some two centuries later.

One of the bodies in the grave had been cremated, the ashes being wrapped in a fringed linen cloth then stored in a bronze amphora from Cyprus. The amphora was engraved with a hunting scene and placed within a still larger bronze bowl. A sword and other grave goods were nearby. It is believed that the ashes were those of a man.

The woman's body was not cremated. Instead, she was buried alongside a wall and adorned with jewelry, including a ring of electrum and a gorget believed to have come from Babylonia and already a thousand years old when it was buried. An iron knife with an ivory handle was found near her shoulder.

Four horses appear to have been sacrificed and were included in the grave. Some of them were wearing iron bits in their mouths.

[edit] References and links

• Morris, Ian (1996). "Negotiated Peripherality in Iron Age Greece: Accepting and Resisting the East". Journal of World-Systems Research 2 (12): –. 

• http://archaeology.about.com/library/glossary/bldef_lefkandi.htm

• http://www.bsa.gla.ac.uk/archive/index.htm?excavs/sitepres/lefkandi/main Lefkandi excavation page from the British School at Athens, which undertook the archaeological dig at the site.

• http://www.stoa.org/metis/Movies/lefkandi/lefkandi.mov Photo tour of the site at Lefkandi.

• http://projectsx.dartmouth.edu/classics/history/bronze_age/lessons/les/8.html#3 Dartmouth classics department site for early Aegean archaeology: "Lefkandi I" and Tiryns Cultures

• http://wwwa.britannica.com/eb/article-26480 Encyclopedia Britannica On-line article The post-Mycenaean period and Lefkandi

• http://www.perseus.org/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=1999.04.0009&loc=3.4 The Perseus Project gives a brief overview of Lefkandi in the context of the Greek Dark Ages, links to images.

• Ancient Greece from Prehistoric to Hellenistic Times by Thomas R. Martin 1996 Yale University Press ISBN 0-300-06956-1 A text written by Prof. Martin to accompany the Perseus Project on-line resources.