Abstract

The present study seeks to re-assess the role played by tholos tombs in the processes of social stratification and state formation that took place in the northeast Peloponnese of the Greek mainland during the Early Mycenaean period. Between the LH IIA and LH IIIA:1 periods (ca. 1600-1370 B.C.), a total of fourteen tholos tombs displaying a wide range in size, technical skill and location were constructed throughout the region. Traditional scholarship associates these funerary monuments with nearby settlements and interprets them as prominent vehicles for the advertisement of status and prestige on the part of local elite. This paper offers an alternate interpretation, suggesting instead that they served to symbolize the expanding authority of a single regional power, namely Mycenae, functioning as territorial indicators marking the boundaries of Mycenaean dominance at the edges of the Argive plain and laying claim to the entire region on behalf of the Mycenaean elite.