The Collective Burials in Boeotia of the War Dead (Fifth to Third Centuries B.C.)

This paper studies the practices used by the Boeotians to bury their war dead through the different sources available: textual, archaeological and epigraphic. In Boeotia, burials in the battlefield seem to have been infrequent, prefering to bury their dead in the necropolis of the city, generally in a collective tumulus, a polyandrion. In addition, cremation seems to be a minority practice against the overwhelming predominance of inhumation. Finally, it seems that the Boeotians did not place any epigram over the polyandria and they preferred to use steles engraving the names of those that had fallen defending the community.