American School of Classical Studies – Souidias 54

Communication1- Ioannis Chalazonitis EFA
From the Early Iron Age onwards, and well into the 6th century BCE, communities in the lower Strymon river valley established burial grounds with visible semata, mostly in the form of tumulus mounds. During later periods, such burial spaces were revisited in a variety of ways, which include engaging in ritual fashion with these visible remains of the past, but also enclosing them inside newly constructed funerary structures, usually in the context of an entirely different community. This presentation discusses notable examples and case studies of such practices, which may have served to co-opt the historical significance of the early monuments or, alternatively, to intentionally erase them from memory.

Communication 2- Sarah M. Norvell ASCSA
This  talk considers to what extent the phenomenon of tomb cult – that is,  later offerings left in ancient tombs as an expression of ancestor worship – contributed to the development of communal identities in Lakonia in the Early Iron Age and Archaic periods. Despite the prominence of this phenomenon in other regions of  the Peloponnese and the importance of heroes in the later cultic life of  Sparta, tomb cult was initially thought not to have been widely attested in Lakonia. Applying recent advances in the  understanding of Early Iron Age Lakonia, I reevaluate this claim in  light of present evidence and suggest that tombs in Lakonia attracted a  range of later engagements, including one-off dedications and potential tomb cults.