ITANOS - 2011

Itanos. S. Kirkpatrick Smith (Kennesaw/ASCSA) and C. Sophianou (ΚΔ’ ΕΠΚΑ) report on human remains from three disturbed Hellenistic graves excavated in 2003 in the North Cemetery at Itanos. These lay close to burned areas of Geometric and Archaic date.

Tomb 3, a stone cist with rectangular covering slabs, had been opened and the bones of a woman scattered inside and outside the tomb. An inscription (ΔΗΜΗΤΡΙΟΥ ΔΗΜΗΤΡΙΟΣ ΧΑ[ΙΡΕ]) gives a terminus post quem of the late second century BC, and the grave goods (two perfume bottles and a kylix) date from the mid-second into the first century. Areas of burning nearby yielded shells, a Cypriot vase and a bronze bowl containing burnt animal bone, dating from the Geometric to late Archaic period.

Tomb 6, cut into the soft bedrock and covered by three slabs, was disturbed and held no artifacts. The human remains of at least four individuals were recovered - three adults (including a male and a female) and a juvenile. The man was over 50, the woman over 35 and the child probably five-seven years of age. Pitting on the interior of the man’s skull may indicate he had recovered from meningitis. A burnt area to the north may be the pyre of a woman: it produced two copper buckles and loom weights and a Late Geometric aryballos. Nearby were fragments of burnt human leg and animal (sheep/goat) bone.

Tomb 7 lay to the east: it too was cut into bedrock, covered by three slabs, and had been disturbed. A late second- to early first-century amphora sherd was recovered. At least three adults (two males and a female) are represented: one had mild arthritis.

Another smaller circular area of burning (the so-called Tomb 4) contained a few unburnt pieces of an adult skeleton: the person had a healed injury to the collar-bone.

Altogether, at least eight individuals were buried here: two adult males, two adult females, three other adults and a child were inhumed, and another adult cremated. The general area remained in use from Geometric to Hellenistic times, with no restrictions on the sex or age of those buried.