Funerary Landscapes of Hellenistic Pergamon and Elaia

The funerary culture of ancient Pergamon has been regarded as a major desideratum in our knowledge about settlement history and urban culture of the city until recently. Concentrated efforts during the last fifteen years have considerably enriched our knowledge in this field, but there are still large gaps in our knowledge, particularly for the Hellenistic period. This paper uses the varied and scattered evidence from Pergamon and its main harbour, Elaia, to reconstruct the Hellenistic funerary landscape of both cities in a comparative and at the same time complementary way. Thanks to the application of the heuristic concept of the funerary landscape, the fragmentary findings can be integrated into larger spatial, cultural and socio-economic configurations. Within this framework, themes such as topographical and juridical qualities of the burial grounds, the relation of graves and cemeteries to infrastructure and activities in the suburban areas, structure and communication within the burial grounds, their appearance ‒ particularly in relation to the natural environment ‒, the integration and function of the graves within the visual regions of Pergamon and Elaia, and finally the construction of social memories are discussed. Despite the incomplete nature of the available evidence, it can be demonstrated that the funerary landscapes of Hellenistic Pergamon and Elaia were characterised by a great variety of places, contexts and spatial atmospheres which probably resulted in similarly multi-faceted social memories.

Keywords:

Pergamon, Elaia, Funerary Landscape, Natural Environment, Social Memory