enlarged cists or actual chambers, were constructed of marble, granite, or
at the very least afine-grained limestone. Since one of the functions of
these regional kinds of tombs seems to have been to make a cavity free of
soil, so that it could be decorated in a special way on the inside, good
quality ashlar masonry was the best method of ensuring that the pressure
of the surrounding earth, whether below or above ground, could be
resisted. Archaeologists usually connect mound burials with social exclu-
sivity, and certainly with conscious social distinction. In classical Athens,
a series of earth mounds in the Kerameikos cemetery was reused for
prominent graves from thefinal quarter of thefifth centurybc. Along
with the burials inperiboloi(walled enclosures), the graves in and around
the Kerameikos mounds, and similar monuments in other Attic cemet-
eries, represent perhaps ten per cent of the population offifth- and
fourth-centurybcAthens.^3
In the northern Aegean monumental tombs were often located at
some distance from urban concentrations, if not actually in rural areas.
In larger peri-urban cemeteries, as at Edessa, or Aiani, Pella, or Abdera,
or in the Pontic coastal harbour towns, graves are heterogeneous, with
monumental constructions interspersed among pits and cists.^4 Outside
major urban centres, monumental graves tend either to be isolated
features in the landscape or arranged in clusters. Many of the vaulted
or painted Macedonian tombs that have been investigated were not
closely connected to any urban nucleus and the majority of Thracian
monumental tombs were likewise sited in scattered, rural locations (see
Fig. 4.7, nos. 21, 22–26; 30, 35–36, 38, 41, 42, 50–55, 67–69; 72, 74–75, 79;
and Fig. 4.8, nos 41–59). This makes it likely that the choice of site was
determined by social or dynastic considerations. The incumbents were
buried, in all likelihood, on their own estates. Did the land in and
around burial monuments become‘sacred land’as a result? The‘pen-
umbra’of mounds around urban centres such as Seuthopolis, Sveshtari,
Adjiyska Vodenitsa, and Philippopolis resembles the concentrations of
temple of Asklepios at Epidauros, calculated as 14.28 Attic drachmae/m^2 , at the low end
(Davies 2005, 120–1, with further refs). In terms of what has already been said above about
equivalence to cult structures, the unit cost would have been somewhere in between these
two extremes, but somewhat nearer the top end rather than the lower one.
(^3) Morris 1992, 128–38.
(^4) Edessa: Chrysostomou 2008, 41–7; Aiani: Karamitrou-Mentessidi 2006a; 2011; Pella:
Chrysostomou and Chrysostomou 2000; 2001; 2002; 2007; Lilimbaki-Akamatis 2009; Nea
Philadelphia, Thessaloniki: Misaïlidou-Despotidou 2008, 24–65; Sedes, Thessaloniki:
Skarlatidou 2009; Oisyme and Galepsos: Koukouli-Chrysanthaki 2006; Abdera:
Skarlatidou 2010; Amphipolis: Malamidou 2006a; 2006b; Apollonia Pontika: Hermary
et al. 2010.
Continuity and commemoration 299