The Coming of the Greeksperiod, but one seems to have been constructed in the sixteenth
century, and still another (Tumulus i) can be dated to the end
of the Middle Helladic period. Each of the four tumuli was
surrounded by a ring of slender stone slabs, just as were the
grave circles at Mycenae. 76 Tumulus I at Vrana and the tumu-
lus at Thorikos are the earliest tumulus burials thus far discov-
ered in Greece. They do not appear to have been simple elab-
orations of Middle Helladic cist graves, but instead seem to
belong to a tradition of tumuli and of grave circles that is best
attested in eastern Anatolia and the Caucasus region. Parallels
are known from the Kurgan Culture above the Caucasus and
from Alaca Huyuk in Anatolia. 77
Especially interesting for our purposes is the skeleton of a
horse found in one of the eight graves under Tumulus I at
Vrana. Marinates concluded that the tomb was meant for the
horse and noted that the small size of the horse fit quite well
with skeletal remains of other horses from the second millen-
nium. 78 Petros Themelis, however, accutely observed that un-
derneath the horse's skeleton the excavators had found what
could only have been part of the slab that had once covered the
grave, 79 and Themelis rightly concluded that the grave could
not have been intended for the horse. In Themelis's reconstruc-
tion of events, the grave at some point collapsed (possibly after
it had been robbed of not only its grave goods but also its hu-
man skeleton). After the collapse, and possibly as late as the
Byzantine or the Turkish period, either a horse fell into the
grave and was killed, or the body of a dead horse was thrown
into the collapsed grave. This solution, however, is not entirely
Praktika 1970, 9—18. Marinates described the tumuli in more cursory fash-
ion in "Prehellenic and Protohellenic Discoveries at Marathon, "Acta of the
Second Int. Colloquium, 184—90.
- Felon, Tholoi, 82-85. Pelon is persuaded that Grave Circles A
and B at Mycenae were likewise once covered by tumuli. - Ibid., 450-51.
- Marinates, "Anaskaphai Marathonos," n, and plate 158.
- P. Themelis, in AD 29 (1974): 242-44.
189