Ancient Greek Deathscapes

Personal, yet utterly universal. Inevitable, yet unknowable. Death has been a dominant theme in all cultures since time immemorial. Central to the theme of death is the burial of the dead in cemeteries. But death also unfolds in other areas such as natural spaces, places of worship, and battlefields. These then become places of intense private and personal significance, which simultaneously act as shared collective sites of experience and remembrance. This article seeks to provide an insight into “deathscapes” and the relationship between space, place, and death in the Classical period by drawing on published archaeological evidence, mainly from southern Greece, and sociological and anthropological theory.