Unwritten Histories: The People of the Phaleron Cemetery

Summary

Ancient Athens is cited as the contentious caldron from which the western political tradition emerged. During the formative Archaic period (ca. 700-480 BC), Athenian history was marked by major political developments (e.g., early law codification, citizenship formalization), social stratification (e.g., classes), and conflict (e.g., tyrants). To date, such processes are known to us through texts, artistic representations, and elite-centered mortuary grounds. The collaborative Phaleron Bioarchaeological Project integrates a wide range of biological, mortuary, and historical data with scientific methodologies to elucidate the ancient lives of the commoners that remain unexplored or silenced. This project focuses upon the extensive necropolis excavated at the ancient Attic port of Phaleron (ca. 8th-4th centuries BC) by the Ephorate of Antiquities of Western Attica, Piraeus, and the Islands. The size, date, state-of-the-art excavation techniques, preservation, and mortuary variation of the cemetery including, among others, what appears to be non-elite strata, as well as mass graves and shackled individuals offer us with a previously undocumented view of the ancient Athenian past. Here, we discuss preliminary bioarchaeological results and we present a contextualized and synthesized approach to reconstruct life and death in Archaic Athens.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 22034