MILIA, MANTINEIA - 2011

Milia, Mantineia (Karali property). A. Karapanagiotou (Director, ΛΘ’ ΕΠΚΑ) reports the discovery of 11 late Hellenistic-early Roman inhumations, part of the cemetery of ancient Mantineia. Most tombs are rock-cut cists: one built cist (the only grave robbed in antiquity) is a careful construction lined with terracotta tiles bedded in lime plaster. A marble basin with a plastic lion head on the exterior at the lip was reused as a sarcophagus for a child burial: the lid was cut from an older inscribed marble funerary stele. Most tombs date from the late Hellenistic to middle Roman periods. Only one (tomb 2) is dated by the grave goods to the early fifth century BC, the only transitional Archaic-Classical grave yet known from Mantineia.

These burials are distinguished by their wealth, with valuable offerings such as jewellery of gold and semi-precious stones, gold danakes, and vases of special function with relief scenes. This picture of opulence, until now unusual in Arkadian cemeteries, concerns tombs of the late second century BC to the early first century AD, which form a group in the middle of the area. In the remaining Roman imperial tombs there is a preference for glass vessels, mostly unguentaria.

The abundance and variety of grave goods confirms that the cist tombs, despite their simple construction, did not belong to poor people. The pottery includes shapes for drinking and wine (the oinochoe, skyphos and lagynos), for oil and other liquids (the unguentarium and askos), and table vessels (the handless skyphos).

In two instances, a stone sarcophagus and a cist, the deceased wore schematised golden leaves, a popular category of funerary offering in Greek lands from the fourth century BC onwards but found here for the first time in Arkadia. The woman buried in tomb 5 and the man in tomb 4 both had as gold danakes placed on the mouth fourth-century BC coins of Sikyon with a flying dove. A bronze Talcott type aryballoid lekythos with a plastic head of Medusa at the lip was used in the funerary rites in honour of the man buried in tomb 5 after the tomb was sealed.

The basin reused as a sarcophagus contained a child burial with rich goods. Around the disintegrated cranium were 16 leaves of light sheet gold with delicate ribbing along them. The child’s chest was adorned with a gold pendant with a suspension ring and a rock-crystal phallus-shaped insert. At left palm was a gold ring with a cornelian bezel bearing a scene from the Dionysiac cycle. At the child’s feet was a glass-paste figurine of a frog.

The image of prosperity presented by the cemetery corresponds with that of late Hellenistic and Imperial Mantineia gained from textual sources and the excavated monuments in the agora of the ancient city.