The site of Alepotrypa Cave, Diros, Lakonia, Southern Greece is a 300m long, remote, cave, which was used during the entire Neolithic and more intensely during the Late and Final periods (6,000-3,200 cal. BC), in association with the surrounding area, as a burial site and a center for rich ceremonial activity. It is characterized by a massive quantity of material culture and great mortuary variability. The patterns of deposition and processing of the human remains include primary single or multiple burials, secondary depositions of multiple commingled remains, and scattered disarticulated bone.
Perhaps the cave served as a mortuary monument for the specific or a broader area, as memorialization has constantly been emphasized by processes of which the memory of the dead was re-incorporated and extended into future generations through actions of disarticulation, fragmentation, commingling, and re- arrangement of the skeletal elements of the ancestors. Parallel repetition for millennia of specific activities of fragmentation, dispersal and structured accumulation of artefacts including mainly pottery, but also tools, plants, animal remains, and dung suggests a monumental and persisting ritual of worship and a place of social congregation, where the memory of the past was revived and reintroduced with ancestral importance for the living.
Therefor Alepotrypa cave contributes information in the discussion of the use of remote places and caves as formalized centers for seasonal crowd aggregations, starting at least from the Early Neolithic and remaining constant till the Final Neolithic in the Mediterranean world. Except from repeated formalized rituals and structured depositions, evidence also exists for formalized attempts to create the notion of the lineage through secondary burial grounds, as well as for a broad web of contacts and traded items and tentatively information and “beliefs”.

First Author: Anastasia Papathanasiou

Keywords:
Neolithic cave
mortuary practices
ritual fragmentation commingling
memoralization
human burials
secondary burials