The Prehistoric Tumuli of Marathon Project was submitted in 2013 to the Athens Archaeological Society by a team of researchers under the joint direction of Prof. Maria Pantelidou Gofa (University of Athens), Prof. Gilles Touchais (Université Paris 1, UMR 7041 ArScAn), Anna Philippa-‐Touchais (École française d’Athènes) and Dr. Nikolas Papadimitriou (University of Heidelberg). The proposal, approved by the Archaeological Society and generously funded by the Shelby White and Leon Levy Program (2015-‐2018), aims at studying and publishing the burial mounts excavated in 1969-‐70 by Spyridon Marinatos on behalf of the Athens Archaeological Society at the site of Vrana, on the SW part of the plain of Marathon, Attica, Greece (Fig. 1).
Marinatos discovered four tumuli ranging in date from the early part of the Middle to the end of the Late Bronze Age (19th-‐13th c. BC). The Vrana tumuli are widely considered as one of the most important funerary complexes in prehistoric Greece. They form part of a rare ‘tumulus cemetery’ (Fig. 2-‐3) and are unusually well preserved with stone periboloi and mantles (Fig. 3-‐4). They include a variety of grave-‐types (cists and pits, built chamber tombs and complex multi-‐roomed tombs) and features of possible ritual use (e.g. a round “altar-‐like feature” between mounds I and II, Fig. 4). They have yielded abundant skeletal material, considerable quantities of pottery, a whole skeleton of a horse, and a number of non-‐ceramic artifacts (bronze weapons, stone tools, jewellery, etc.).
The cemetery was never studied in full due to Marinatos’ untimely death (1974). As a result, Vrana is still known through brief preliminary reports, a few plans, sections and photos of the burial mounds, and images of selected artifacts.
