2.

a) Outline how burial practices changed in Athens during the

archaic
and classical periods.
b) Discuss how archaeologists have used this evidence to understand the
development of democracy
and explain any difficulties that might
exist when trying to do this.
By dividing burial practices into the archaic and classical periods, we
can observe a lot of differences in between the periods. In order to
understand them better we should focus on Athens historical context from the
ninth century to the sixth century B.C.
During the archaic period (720 B.C. - 480 B.C.), Athens was an
economic prosperous polis but no more important, in terms of archaeology, as
any other poleis in Greece. Power was in the hands of several large
aristocratic families. Athens was an oligarchy where the land belonged to a
few man. Social prestige and political office were connected with property and
military powers and all the other inhabitants had almost none, if some, voice
at all. Athenian democracy only started circa 620 BC and developed through
many reforms until the 420 B.C. Athens rose to be a powerful state in the
Classical period and during its democracy phase, there was a lot of
investment in civic architecture.
The late seventh and early sixth centuries held a great deal of social
tensions in Athens. Due to Dracos laws, the poorer citizens were constantly
turning against the powerful landowners who kept turning more powerful as
many citizens had to sell croppers, lands, and sometimes themselves, or
members of their own family into slavery to meet their debts. The Athenian
aristocracy built a great part of its empire with mortgage, from the poor, that
couldnt pay their debts, often because of weather complications.
Unfortunately, due to the Persian war and the destruction it caused, there is a
gap of registers, sources and materials during the sixth century. Little
evidence is left or was found.
Around 590 B.C. Solon was appointed as magistrate to resolve the
Athenian crisis. He rewrote Dracos laws and in some ways, soothed the
social inequality in Athenian society. Power now was not connected to birth
but to the amount of land you owned, and so was your ability to participate in
civic matters. Also, the concern for the impact of elaborate funerals took part
in Solons legislation, curbing funerary display, and was afterwards reinforced
by Ciceros. The display of wealth as grave markers was still very common
and generated tensions.
Even thought after Solons reforms there was less disagreement in the
Athenian society, the people started to grow tired of tyranny. Tyrant should
not be mistaken for the modern meaning it holds, but it is the Greek word
meaning for ruler of the polis. Although, as rulers, they tended to set up
dictatorships within the poleis, raise armies and attack other poleis to expand
their influence.
The rising Greek distaste for tyrants led to the creation of alternative
systems of self-government, which eventually led to the Athenian democracy.
Tyrants where never followed by pure democracy, but their behaviour created
the political will to develop a more efficient and fair system of governance.
The young Athenian democracy started with Cleisthenes reforms
around 500 B.C. The reforms enlarged the Athenian Assembly and increased

its powers. They also created the Boule to represent the different classes,
among many other improvements. Unfortunately
The Athens of the 5th century counted with the Demosion Sema, a
burial ground for the war dead and other notables, the Acropolis most
important location -, and the Agora multipurpose public space, hub of
democratic life that held the Boule and the citys market -. The Agora was a
default public space until 390 BC when it became the focus of attentions, as a
market place, and was remade to be a democratic space, while keeping its
social atmosphere.
The Archaic period also held the battle of Marathon, as it is an iconic
mark, it should be mentioned. The Athenians that died in battle, that took
place outside of Athens, had the liberty of having their bodies cremated in site
and then brought back to Athens to be buried.
Burials in the archaic period bring some of their characteristics from the
Dark Age. Through archaeology we can reconstruct the social and political
organization of the city as much of the evidence comes from burials. The rites
varied over time from inhumations and cremations, multiple or single, and by
analyzing their ways, and the absence of markers, graves, statues or many
other ways of burials, you may reconstruct social and political differences
between individuals and their relations. Inhumation bodies were normally
placed on a small grave or a cist, a rectangular pit lined by stones or in a slabcovered pit. It is not unusual for those graves to contain, along with the
remains, jewellery (for women), weaponry (for men) or other objects or goods
that indicated how rich or important the deceased might have been. Iron was
also found in some graves as a mark of social status as it was a very difficult
metal to obtain.
Towards the Iron Age, Cremation grew as method even though a
cremation ceremony was much more expensive than a normal burial. By the
750 B.C., a bit before the actual Ancient period, the majority of burial
ceremonies were already cremation ones. There was also the importance of
horses, as you own a horse you need economic power, horses display can be
observed in pottery. In the Iron Age people displayed their status in burials
until laws came to change that and invest the burial money in the city. It
changed for a practice that everyone could afford, the burials stopped being
so elaborate, within the increase of the democracy.
Another way of displaying your wealth was through the large pot above
the burial. Belly-handled for women and the krater, wine mixer, for men, they
both contained scenes and illustrations. Regarding the representations on the
pots, the subjects of the scenes are limited to burials or warfare. There is no
sure about the representations, if they are from actual burials, burial practices
or idealized versions of heroic burials from the Bronze Age. Also, there are
some burials that are from the same time of the Homeric poems, so some of
them contain mythological scenes from the Trojan Cycle.
During the democratization of the burials, the pots also stopped. That
could also have happened due to an increase in the population as an increase
asks for better social organisation.

That the Athenian citizen population grew abnormally fast between 500 and
430 B.C. is not itself improbable, but population growth is an inadequate
explanation of Pericles Citizenship Law 1
At the Kerameikos cemetery many different burials were found. When
the used method was inhumation there were CIST grave or PIT graves,
except for children who had their remains in vessels. Cremations were also
disposed in vessels or pithos. There were urns placed in the pits and the
buried bodies had offerings. There were also external markers to increase
visibility, like the Stele (Stelae), like the Kouros (the wine mixer) or actual built
tombs.
On cremations, offerings were placed on a built platform of mud brick
and were burned together with the body and than swept into the open grave.
On the inhumations ceremonies, a pit was dug and offerings were burnt in the
pit. In Athens, by the end of the eighth century inhumations were four times
more common than cremations, by the seventh century cremation ceremonies
were around 70% and in the mid 6th century inhumations increase again.
The Athenian democracy, though only held as citizens: adult males
born in Athens. Lisa C. Nevett, in her article Towards a Female Topography of
the Ancient Greek City debates about the role and importance of women that
changed overtime, using burial practises.
In the burial rites, women had the duty to walk in the funerary
procession as mourners. Evidence also suggests that in the fifth century
women had a habit of returning to grave sites do tend the graves, leaving
offerings or ribbons. Those visit to tombs were a theme represented on
painted pottery. Although the paintings can not be taken as snapshots, they
might be intended to symbolise that tending to graves was one of the
domestic womens chores. Lisa also notes that many of the burials were
organised in family plots, except for the graves of young children that were
frequently cluster outside specific city gates, close to main roads that lad to
sanctuaries which hosted cults and festival regarding women importance, as
Artemis and Demeter.
Robin Osborne too, in his article: Law, the Democratic Citizen and the
Representation of Women in Classical Athens, addresses the transformation
of funerary monuments from displaying only men, to displaying prominently
women, as the women achieved a new important place in citizen identity.
According to Osborne, the laws insistence that citizens should have Athenian
mothers let to the advertisement of mothers and wives. That advertising,
though, could not be held at any public places, but only where display of
respectable women was acceptable, and that was in the cemetery.
The best evidence for Athenian citizen numbers in the fifth century
comes from Thucydides account. Around the 500 B.C., Athenians stopped
putting monumental markers on graves. The reason about that is not clear but
it is suggested tat the legislation referred by Cicero may be relevant. Also

1 R. Osborne, Law, the Democratic Citizen and the Representation of Women in
Classical Athens, Past & Present, 155 (1997), p. 5

there could have been general resistance to elitist display in the new
democracy. When the markers reappear, in the third quarter of the 5th century
they look, according to Osborne, very different. First, the number of figuring
representing women outnumbered the amount of figure representing men. Not
only markers (stelai) but also in the lekythoi (vessels). Also, an important
question outlined by the author is why did they come back and did the new
fifth century funerary reliefs differed from the sixth in ways that would make
them less politically offensive or more politically acceptable?
So, whether as a result of the law or not, funerary monuments disappeared
from the archaeological record by the end of the sixth century.
When they reappear in the second half of the fifth century B.C., we must
suppose that, whether or not the law had been repealed, public concern had
lessened. 2
The author argues that, this shift in representation could be associated
to many things as: changes in attitudes to women, in attitudes to death or in
artistic habits. The last option is quite vague as it is not comprehensible that
art moments are independent from the society. About the second option,
Osborne argues that the Archaic reliefs normally focus on the life lived, as the
hoplite, or the athlete. The freestanding sculptures are normally naked male
figures, the kouroi, where the sculpture gives no sense about the individuals
achievements. That would be a shift in the way that they deal with dead. From
the Archaic to the Classical period though, the representation of life
achievements or the no representation at all, from the kouroi that everyone
could indentify as yourself, it comes a change in instead of representing life
achievements, representing social settings of the deceased instead, putting
the figure of the deceased into a setting in which relationships rather than
actions are most prominent and giving emphasis to the family circle. Also that
death may have changed its meaning, as death would not be seen as an
ending to the public achievements of an individual, but, in a social context as
force disrupting a family and friends group.
Therefore, the change was not related to an unwillingness to display
women, but an unwillingness to display women as an individual of
achievements, as the archaic society saw those life achievements as a most
important thing and held public life as mens prestige. In the classical period,
things changed family became as immediate social group and its relations
where put in the centre, being a qualification for sculpture, women started
appearing on it.
As said before, sixth century funerary monuments primarily
commemorate the deaths of young men and most commonly by evoking the
world of gymnasium. Democracy doesnt look good on the lifestyle of wealthy
young man, as it points around which family groups might be rallied with
politically subversive intent, as democracy should be about equality and not
showing what makes you special. Instead of trying to look more special than
others, monuments were now showing the loss of the family, which was less
hostile to democracy. That made funerary display a political matter.

2 Osborne, Law and Democratic, p. 27

It might indeed be seen to promote democracy, since such losses were

paralleled in all households, poor as well as rich.3
Classical Athens was more repressive in its dealings with women than
other Greek cities, particularly in matters of property rights. They had several
limitations in their rights, in the sixth century B.C., but womens legal position
didnt change significantly between the sixth and the fourth century, so why
did the funerary monuments did? Around 450 B.C. an Athenian mother was
required for Athenian citizenship.
By doing so the agenda of masculinity was altered, the household acquired a
new and different place in the Athenian ideology and, if womens work itself
remained essentially unaltered, it had at least ceased to be unseen and
unsung.4
It is important to keep in mind that, as everything, archaeology is
interpreted. There are many chronological gaps and difference between texts.
History happened a long time ago, much of the information is based on found
texts and writings of other. Thucydides for example, a lot of what he says is
taken in account but we have very limited knowledge of his life, he has a very
complicated writing style and he also does not tell what his sources were. He
does not use the precise words or speeches but tell them from memories.

3 R. Osborne, Law and Democratic, p. 28
4 Ibid., p.33

Bibliography:
Nevett, L., Towards a Female Topography of the Ancient Greek City: Case
Studies from Late Archaic and Early Classical Athens (c. 520-400 BCE),
Gender & History, Vol. 23 (211), pp. 576-596.
Shear, J. Cultural change, space, and the politics of commemorations in
Athens, in R.G. Osborne (ed.) Debating the Athenian Cultural Revolution: Art,
Literature, Philosophy and Politics 430-380 B.C., Cambridge (2007), pp. 91115.
Osborne, O. Law, the Democratic Citizen and the Representation of Women
in Classical Athens, Past & Present, No. 155 (1997), pp. 3-33