561-571

The excavation of a burial mound at Abdera

• Καλλιντζή, Κωνσταντίνα

In 1989, illegal research in the cemetery of ancient Abdera yielded and partly destroyed a marble sarcophagus. A rescue excavation of the mound was carried out immediately afterwards, during which ten burials were found in the lower part of the mound. Four of them were burials of adults: three inhumations in a porussarcophagus, a cist-grave and the marble sarcophagus mentioned above, and a cremation in a pit-grave. The rest were burials of children in pithoi. Remains of the ceremonies, which took place during and after the burial and were repeated in chthonic festivals, were discovered in the western part of the mound, between the graves and on them; these mainly comprised pyrae, offerings of figurines, vases with holes used for libations and fragments of vases. This evidence does not exist in the central and eastern part of the mound, where the burials of adults were concentrated. The burials of children contained rich offerings, while those of adults just a few. The mound, which probably contained graves of one family, date to the late Classical or early Hellenistic period.

• History and Archaeology

• Ανασκαφές (Αρχαιολογία)

τάφοι, Ξάνθη, συνέδρια

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