To Die in Style! The residential lifestyle of feasting and dying in Iron Age Stamna, Greece

This volume investigates the culture of feasting and the rituals of death among elite citizens in Iron Age Stamna, Greece, by studying archaeological finds from a large number of Protogeometric era tombs.

Symposium in Stamna both as a concept and as a process involved the presence of prominent citizens of the social establishment as testified by the large cauldrons, the tripod jars and the tripod vessels present. To Die in Style! The residential lifestyle of feasting and dying in Iron Age Stamna, Greece re-examines the cemeteries studied to date, isolating tombs with unique architecture or peculiar structures with individual features, in order to investigate the complex identity of the elite group ideologies. The finding and studying of such a large number of PRG tombs (c. 500), presents a remarkable representative example for the discussion on the perception of death, confronting it through the mourning ritual, but also examining the creation of an individual and collective memory of the population that operated in this privileged geographic installation, redefining as such the cultural landscape of the Protogeometric era. The pre-existing theoretical framework, the methodology of managing and displaying of grief and their correlation with already studied and exalted geographical parallels, integrate Stamna into the cultural chain of the populations ruled by an overall-systematic design of a particular cultural ideology.