Natural and Human Components shaping a Landscape of Memory during the Long-term Occupation of the Trapeza, Aigion, Achaea

The archaeological landscape of the Trapeza hill, most probably the seat of the ancient polis of Rhypes, located inland, several kilometers south of Aigion, Eastern Achaea, has been the object of systematic fieldwork since 2007, including – since 2010 - the investigation of the evidence of prehistoric occupation. By using a multi-dimensional approach, taking into account different but deeply related aspects, including topographical, geomorphological, chrono-stratigraphic and cultural issues, the research aims at understanding the long-term human occupation of the area in prehistoric times, starting in the Final Neolithic period and continuing well into the Early Iron Age (ca. late 4th millennium- 10th cent. BC). The study of the geomorphological, stratigraphic and cultural aspects has permitted the archaeologists to analyze a pattern of interaction between the natural and the human components of landscape evolution, on one hand considering how environmental features could have been landmarks that influenced the perception of the landscape, and on the other hand explaining how natural agents considerably affected the modes and dynamics of the human approach to their past, including retrieval, oblivion and abandonment. Following the very same pattern, cultural components could have enhanced the symbolic role of selected places; more intriguingly, a few hybrid components, deriving from the transformation of the human landscape by the pressure of natural constraints, could have played a role as strong mnemonic devices. One of the focuses of our research is the Mycenaean cemetery filled with chamber tombs at the Southwestern foot of the Trapeza plateau, which was used from LH IIIA1 till late in the Postpalatial period or Submycenaean, while the area was still occupied in the EIA. The cemetery may had a small knoll visible from afar and featuring the morphology of the area as its main focal point; at the same time, conditions of inter-visibility with a Middle Helladic settlement located in front of the funerary site and still occupied during the early Mycenaean period, seems to have played a role in the locational choice. By constituting a direct link to a recent past, the village represented a major ideological resource, prompting the perception of an ancestral landscape and the beginning of memorializing practices. Evidence for such practices has been explored in the archaeological record related to the funerary rites and ritual gestures in the tombs, where some ambiguous and controversial evidence has been collected. The complex diachronic pattern of use of the tombs, from LH IIIA 1 up to the very end of the Bronze Age or LBA/EIA transition (15th-11th cent.), indeed offers evidence of an ideological confrontation with the past including both practices of legitimization through ritual celebration of the ancestors and gestures of rupture and discontinuity through the spoiling and the destroying old semata which signaled single tombs. Meanwhile, geoarchaeological investigation opened up a new perspective on the organization of the cemetery as a landscape of memory, founded not only on the use of semata, but also on the manipulation of the natural environment. Notwithstanding the usual closure of the dromoi with fill layers after main burial cycles, the location of every single tomb seems to have been intentionally enhanced by only partially filling the dromos. Post-depositional natural phenomena consisting of slope colluvium were later responsible for the oblivion and removal of the tomb from the cultural landscape of remembrance. Natural processes, however, were also responsible for the progressive formation of a “landscape of ruins”, which played a main role in the activation of selective relationships with the past in the long term: specifically, collapsed funerary chambers, well-perceivable in the morphological profile of the slope, could become long-lasting objectives of offering and ritual action throughout historical times and up until the Late Classical/Hellenistic period, when access to the residential quarters as well as to the monumental temple on the Trapeza plateau was still negotiated with the ancestors