The South-Eastern Aegean in the Mycenaean Period: Islands, landscape, death and ancestors

Mycenaean influence was exerted on the islands of the south-eastern Aegean through the improvement of both people and ideas through migration, colonisation and invasion. This study explores Mycenaean influence through analysing the burial record of islands in the south-west and in particular Karpathos, Rhodes, Kos and Ialysos. Data on the architecture and types of burials found, treatment of the body, funerary ritual and grave goods, are used to build a picture of local and regional burial traditions and belief systems. Issues of ethnicity and culture, ideological and cosmological beliefs, as well as the social and political characteristics of these Mycenaean societies, are discussed and common traditions highlighted.