The absolute chronology of the North Cemetery at Ayios Vasileios, Laconia

In mortuary archaeology, it can be particularly difficult to establish a spatiotemporal framework for specific contexts such as commingled or unfurnished burials. This is the case for the Ayios Vasileios North Cemetery, a 2nd millennium BCE site in Greece. Here, the uneven stratigraphic information, the use of tombs for multiple burials, the manipulation of human remains, and the scarcity of ceramic offerings has hampered chronological analysis. In this study, we analysed 56 radiocarbon dates on human remains where we sought to establish an absolute chronology for this Early Mycenaean cemetery. We used Kernel Density Estimation to assess the length of use of the cemetery and compared the results to different ceramic typology-based chronologies of Bronze Age Greece. Our analysis placed many of the burial contexts in different cultural phases when different ceramic chronologies (High or Low Chronology) were used, highlighting the necessity for a higher resolution Aegean chronology. Regardless of the preferred system, the current data indicate that activity at the cemetery extended from at least Middle Helladic III to Late Helladic IIB.