examples are often located in arablefields (Fig. 8.1) which emphasizes how
vulnerable such monuments are to erosion through the normal processes
of land use. Intensive cultivation has denuded landscapes of many such
constructions over more than two millennia, so ancient statistics for the
original provision of mound burials can only be guessed at.
Even when such monuments were located in more marginal areas, on
hills or scarps that made them yet more prominent features of the
landscape, they nevertheless involved the concentration of exceptional
resources—in terms of the manpower required to raise the mound; the
stone to build the cist or tomb, sometimes an elaborate masonry struc-
ture; as well as a wide range of subsidiary and decorative materials,
alongside all of which we should include grave goods. Tombs of this
type were designed and built to a noticeably higher specification than
private residential structures and therefore occupied a more significant
role in regional economies than, for example, residential units. In terms
of resource intensity, funerary monuments will often have attracted a
cost much closer to that of cult buildings.^2 Many built tombs, whether
Fig. 8.1.Vetren, tumulus 2: mound in thefields between the archaeological
remains at Adjiyska Vodenitsa and the town of Vetren, in the foothills of the
Sredna Gora, west of Plovdiv, central Bulgaria.
(^2) See above, Ch. 4 and n.25; the theoretical price range is potentially enormous, with the
Parthenon at 1893.9 Attic drachmae/m^2 , at the high end, and a workshop adjacent to the
298 Continuity and commemoration