ABSTRACT
While various 12th-century BCE settlements and urban centres on Cyprus are well documented and transformations in the material culture are clearly visible, contemporaneous mortuary data is somewhat limited. Therefore, mortuary practices have often been neglected in the discussion of the ‘unstable’ period at the end of the Late Bronze Age.
The evidence from various Cypriot sites shows that existing graves of the 16th–13th centuries BCE only rarely continued to be in use in the 12th century BCE. In addition, shaft graves with single burials appeared around 1200 BCE, as well as peculiar interments of individuals in abandoned wells, characterised by a scarcity of burial gifts.
This chapter will therefore discuss the following questions based on selected mortuary contexts from Hala Sultan Tekke: How may the discontinuities in grave use, the decrease of mortuary expenditure be explained in the light of other transformations during this period? What may the location of the burials and the grave inventories tell us about funerals and their meaning in society? Finally, it will be discussed whether there were similar developments in surrounding regions, primarily the Aegean and the Levant, that may have influenced Cypriot practices.
