Pseira VI: The Pseira Cemetery 1. The Surface Survey

Richard B Seager excavated the Minoan cemetery on Pseira, a small island off the northeast coast of Crete, in 1907, although this work was never published. More recently, the Temple University excavations (1985-1994) under the direction of Philip P Betancourt and Costis Davaras conducted an intensive surface survey of the cemetery area, cleaned and drew plans of all the visible tombs, and excavated tombs that had not been previously investigated. The results of these new excavations are published in two volumes. This volume, Pseira VI, covers the methodology that was employed in the investigation, the topography of the cemetery area, details of Seager's campaign, the ceramic petrography for the cemetery pottery, and the results of the intensive surface survey. The survey showed that the cemetery was first used in the Neolithic period, and that it was abandoned in Middle Minoan II, before the expansion of the nearby town in the Late Minoan I period. It also demonstrated that the cemetery was larger than the area suggested by Seager, and that the funerary customs included burial in jars, even though no examples of this burial type have been excavated.