ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the organization of Mycenaean society and its religious beliefs. Although it is inconceivable that the Middle Helladic people had no religious beliefs, none of their dwellings has yielded anything corresponding to the Cretan 'house-sane tuaries'; while their tombs, though now known in great numbers, tell us nothing of their beliefs about life and death. Although the Middle Helladic period is poorly documented, so far as religious beliefs and practices are concerned, we might hope to be in better case when we come to the Shaft Grave era. The tholoi afford even clearer evidence than the Shaft Graves that the inhabitants of the Peloponnese had some belief in a life after death. Naturally, if the people who prevailed in southern Greece after the fall of the Mycenaean palaces had in fact been living in that very region during the period of Mycenaean dominance, one would not expect them to have introduced any alien religious beliefs.
