Infants of the Aegean Bronze Age : A study of intramural infant burials in their social context

Sammanfattning: This thesis explores the phenomenon of intramural infant burial during Middle Helladic III–Late Helladic II during the Aegean Bronze Age. Intramural graves of children aged two years or less at Málthi and Ayios Stephanos, two settlements on the Greek mainland, are studied from a number of perspectives: the physical properties of the graves and the buried infants, the spatial and intramural context of the grave, and their relationship to their social and societal context. Some things found to be relevant in the analysis were the importance of kinship and group belonging, as well as shifting funerary practices in a time of large-scale socio-economic change in the region.