Volimidia

Volimidia () is an archaeological site in Messenia, in the Peloponnese region of Greece. From the end of the Middle Bronze Age (), it was used as a cemetery, and was the site of a Mycenaean settlement from the Late Helladic I period () until the end of Late Helladic III in around 1180 BCE. The Bronze Age cemetery consists of 35 tombs, mostly identified as chamber tombs. It may have been the site known in the Mycenaean period as Sphagianes, which was a religious centre in the territory of the Palace of Nestor at Pylos.

The chamber tombs at Volimidia are morphologically unusual, with rounded chambers and domed roofs rather than the more usual square and sloped constructions. It has been suggested that this may have been in imitation of the more monumental tholos tombs, which are unknown at Volimidia but began to be constructed elsewhere in Messenia at around the same time. Burials were generally made in an extended position, with few grave goods except pottery vessels, though flint and obsidian arrowheads were also commonly deposited. From the Late Helladic II period (), practices of secondary burial became common, by which older, skeletonised bodies were disarticulated and their skulls grouped together.

In the Iron Age, the tombs at Volimidia became the focus of ritual activities known as "tomb cult", by which people re-opened the tombs to leave offerings, perform sacrifices, or inter additional burials. This practice intensified in the Hellenistic period (323–30 BCE), following Messenia's independence from Sparta in 369, and continued into the following Roman period. The area also appears to have been inhabited during this time, with a kiln and a bath-house constructed at the site.

Almost all of the tombs at Volimidia were excavated between 1952 and 1965 by Spyridon Marinatos, working for the Greek Archaeological Service in collaboration with the excavations of Carl Blegen at Pylos. Marinatos also made small-scale excavations in the Mycenaean settlement. Further tombs were excavated by in 1972, by the Archaeological Service in 1990, and by George S. Korres in 1991.

Site

The site of Volimidia is located about north-northeast of the modern town of Chora in Messenia, in the southwest part of the Peloponnese region of Greece. It is approximately northeast of the Palace of Nestor at Pylos, the centre of the Mycenaean polity of Messenia during the Late Bronze Age. Its name comes from the Greek word (; ) – a reference to the tendency of the ground to collapse because of the dug-out chambers of Mycenaean chamber tombs in the area. The site's excavator, Spyridon Marinatos, suggested that the large number of tombs might be explained by the soft, easily worked ground in the area. The site may also have functioned as a crossing of routes between the coast and the Aigaleon mountain range in central Messenia.

Late Bronze Age

A total of 35 Late Bronze Age tombs are known at Volimidia; they are divided into five clustered groups, each about apart. The clusters are mostly named after the owners of the properties on which they were found. The largest is the Angelopoulos cluster, with eleven tombs; the Tsoulea–Voria and Kephalovryso clusters have seven each, while the Koronios group has six and the Mastoraki plot one.

The earliest tomb at the site is numbered as Kephalovryso 1: the pottery in this tomb dates to the Middle Helladic III period (), and the grave is a rectangular pit similar in form to a shaft grave. It was cut into an existing natural cavity, and both larger and more richly filled with offerings than earlier known burials. It may originally have been covered with a tumulus. This tomb appears to have formed the nucleus of the earliest cemetery at the site; among the earliest chamber tombs are Kephalovryso 5 and 6, both immediately adjacent to it. Marinatos claimed to have identified other graves of a type intermediate between a pit and a shaft grave, dating to the Middle Helladic period (), at the site, though only Kephalovryso 1 could be excavated as the others lay beneath the modern road.

The remaining tombs are usually identified as chamber tombs, though they share some characteristics with the usually more monumentalised tholos tombs, which began to be constructed in Messenia at the end of the Middle Helladic period. These features include a rounded (rather than square) chamber and a domed (rather than sloped) roof; Carla Antonaccio suggests that the Volimidia tombs may more accurately be categorised as small tholos tombs. , who worked on Marinatos's excavations and drew the plans of the tombs, suggested that they were made in imitation of tholos tombs: Marinatos, in contrast, considered the Volimidia tombs to be the origin of the circular chamber shape, and to have predated the construction of tholos tombs.

The earliest of the chamber tombs date to the Late Helladic I period (), while the latest date to Late Helladic III (), with signs of use until the end of that period. The latest find from the cemetery is a jug dating to the Late Helladic IIIC period (, contemporary with the destruction of the Palace of Nestor at Pylos. Nineteen of the tombs furnished finds from the Late Helladic I period: after the Kephalovryso cluster, the Koroniou cluster appears to have been the next established, followed by the Angelopoulos cluster and the Tsoulea–Voria cluster as the latest. Both the Koroniou and Angelopoulos clusters have a clear boundary from the earlier tombs, leading Andreas Vlachopoulos to suggest that they were established by a burying group distinct, perhaps in kinship, from those using the Kephalovryso tombs. The tombs were mostly oriented with their facing west, and were often constructed to align with those nearby.

Bodies in the cemetery were generally placed in an extended position, in common with later burials in tholos tombs but unlike the previous practice of burial inside large jars known as pithoi. Most of the tombs contained few grave goods; in particular, the burials tended not to include jewellery and furnished no bronze weapons, in contrast to elite tombs from elsewhere in the Mycenaean world. Several burials were accompanied by arrowheads made of flint or obsidian, pottery drinking vessels were common, and two tombs of the Angelopoulos cluster (6 and 8) contained sealstones. A stirrup jar found in the tomb numbered as Kephalovryso B is similar to those used in Minoan Crete, and may have been a Cretan import or a local product made in imitation of Cretan styles. Vlachopoulos suggests that the burying community was poor in wealth and relatively uninterested in using funerary ritual to display social status. During the Late Helladic II period, secondary funerary practices began to be used at the site, particularly the disarticulation of skeletonised remains and the placement of their skulls in collective groups. Claire Zavidil has characterised this as a shift from using burial as a means of expressing the socio-political identity of the deceased towards one which emphasised the connections between dead ancestors and the living, and as a sign of the growing importance of collectivism among the burying groups.

A Bronze Age settlement, occupied between the Late Helladic I and Late Helladic III, existed around to the south of the cemetery. Michael Boyd, noting that the evidence for the use of the cemetery predates that for the existence of the settlement, suggests that the latter may have come into being because of the site's use for burials. Marinatos considered Volimidia to be the site of "Palaipylos", or the site known as Pylos in the Homeric poems: modern scholars consider this to be the Palace of Nestor at Ano Englianos. Nigel Spencer has suggested that the earlier tombs of Volimidia belonged to a local elite group distinct from that at Ano Englianos (and that the same was true of the contemporary tombs at Koryfasio, Voidokilia, Tragana, Koukounara and Myrsinochori, all large cemeteries in the broad vicinity of Pylos), which remained independent of Pylian authority until the Late Helladic IIIA period (); John Bennet suggests that the lack of a tholos tomb at Volimidia, when tombs of this type began to be built at Pylos and other sites in the Late Helladic I, indicates that the site was already under Pylian control. He considers Volimidia likely to have been a second-order centre and a major site within the palatial state.

Possible identification with Sphagianes

At the end of the Late Bronze Age, Volimidia was in the territory controlled by the Mycenaean state based at the palatial centre of Pylos. Richard Hope Simpson posited in 1982 that it may have been a local administrative centre. John Chadwick suggested in 1972 that Volimidia may have been the site known in the Pylian Linear B records as Sphagianes (Mycenaean Greek: , syllabic transcription ). Sphagianes is believed to have been a religious centre near Pylos; most of the landholders there, including the priestess Eritha, are described with titles associated with religious cult, particularly forty-six people labelled as "servants of the god". The site was dedicated to the goddess Potnia, who may have been a mother goddess and was possibly the chief goddess of the Pylian pantheon. This hypothesis was endorsed in 1999 by John Bennet and in 2014 by Richard Hope Simpson, though Andreas Vlachopoulos wrote in 2021 that it was not universally accepted. Barbara Montecchi has suggested that ''Sphagianes'' may have been the name of a district, perhaps including the settlement of Pylos itself, or of all or part of that settlement.

Later periods

A burial was made in a pit grave a few metres south of the tomb numbered as Kephalovrysos 1, at some point after the Mycenaean period: it contained a pottery kantharos vessel variously dated to the Submycenaean period (immediately following the Bronze Age) and the succeeding Early Iron Age. The tombs were used, as were other Mycenaean cemeteries in Messenia, for ritual activity and ancestor-worship, known as "tomb cult". A further six tombs in total contained pottery placed there in later periods: this assemblage consisted of one Protogeometric jug () and twenty-six vases from the Late Geometric period (). This included at least ten Late Geometric vessels in Angelopoulos 4 and 10 or 11, probably of local manufacture, in Angelopoulos 5. Cultic activity may have continued during the period in which Messenia was ruled by Sparta (from the late eighth century until 369 BCE); Susan E. Alcock has suggested that it could have formed a means of asserting and maintaining Messenian identity in this period.

Evidence for tomb cult at Volimidia dramatically increases following Messenia's independence from Sparta; Alcock writes that Messenia has "pride of place" for the activity in post-classical Greece, furnishing a total of eight sites with clear evidence for it. The Volimidia tombs were extensively reused in the ensuing Hellenistic and Roman periods (that is, from 323 BCE). A total of four funerary pyres were made in the tomb numbered as Angelopoulos 2 (two in the and two in the burial chamber): one pyre in the is dated to on the basis of associated cooking wares, while one in the chamber included a third-century BCE coin of Argos as well as evidence of a pig sacrifice; there were also extensive remains of pottery, metal, glass and other finds which Alcock determines to be, at least in part, votive offerings. Also during the Hellenistic period, a further burial was made in the middle of the chamber of Angelopoulos 11. A group of five Hellenistic burials in pits were made around the tombs of the Angelopoulos cluster, some in the of the Mycenaean tombs, while Hellenistic burials were made in tombs 2 and 4 of the Kephalovrysos cluster.

In the of Angelopoulos 6, the largest tomb at Volimidia, a post-Mycenaean burial was made: Marinatos considered it to be Hellenistic in date. The chamber included pottery of Mycenaean, Hellenistic and Roman date, as well as the bones of ox, deer, pigs and stags, all within two burial pits. Marinatos interpreted these as Mycenaean burials with later votive offerings, while Alcock suggests that the burials themselves may have been Hellenistic, and George Korres interprets most of the material remains as dumped refuse. In the Roman period, tile graves were made in the tomb numbered as Voria–Tsoulea 2. Roman pottery, including material from the imperial and early Christian eras, was found in Angelopoulos 4. Alcock describes the reuse of the tombs at Volimidia as "without doubt the longest and among the most complicated xample of its kindin Greece".

There is believed to have been a Hellenistic and Roman settlement in the vicinity of Volimidia. As well as the tile graves, Roman and Hellenistic constructions at the site included a kiln and a bath-house. Surface finds of Roman potsherds are extremely common at the site.

Archaeological study

Spyridon Marinatos, an ephor of the Greek Archaeological Service, investigated sites in the hinterland of Pylos in the early 1950s, alongside the excavations of the palace led by Carl Blegen. Marinatos excavated 31 or 32 tombs at Volimidia between 1952 and 1965, including one cleared in 1952 by George E. Mylonas, his colleague in the Archaeological Service. At the time of Marinatos's excavation, most of the tombs had been looted; he prioritised work on those tombs with subsided roofs, as this made them highly visible to potential looters and was the most common means by which they were identified. In his publications, Marinatos recorded the excavation of the first eight tombs in 1952; this was followed by the publication of nine in 1953, three in 1954 (plus the bath-house), three in 1960, three in 1964, and of six, in the Kephalovrysos cluster, in 1965.

Marinatos attempted to find the settlement he believed to be associated with the cemetery: he opened a test trench in 1953, in a feild owned by the Patriarcheas family to the south of the Angelopoulos cluster, where he found traces of walls from the Late Helladic III period and a lower level, without walls: the latter deposit included a dense concentration of Vapheio-style cups, which Marinatos took to indicate an (). Marinatos dated the lower level to Late Helladic I (); later study by Yannis Lolos dated it as a mixture of Late Helladic I and Late Helladic IIA () material.

Two further chamber tombs in the Kephalovryso cluster, numbered A and B, were excavated by the Greek Archaeological Service in 1972, under the direction of . In 1990, rescue excavations were undertaken by the Archaeological Service of a tomb discovered and damaged during building work. The tomb was found to contain a burial in the chamber, five burial pits dug into its floor, and a further pile of bones within it. All of the burial pits contained human bones; one held the remains of at least three individuals. Finds from the tomb included various pottery vessels and a psi-type figurine, the latter of a type produced between the Late Helladic IIA and Late Helladic III periods. George S. Korres excavated another chamber tomb, near the Tsoulea–Voria cluster, in 1991.

Footnotes

Explanatory notes

References

Bibliography

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Ancient cemeteries in Greece
Mycenaean sites in the Peloponnese (region)