Multiple signet rings and seals in Bronze Age Aegean funerary contexts: objects as embodiment and ritual traces

In the Bronze Age Aegean, glyptic objects like signet rings and seals amass the largest corpus of iconography with over 10,000 extant objects. Previous attempts to understand Aegean glyptic have either attempted to decipher the enigmatic iconography or emphasize their role in administrative systems as individual identifiers. This thesis complicates these previous treatments of the material by examining instances of multiple signet rings and seals in funerary contexts with case studies from Sellopoulo, Vapheio, and Pylos. The traditional interpretation of this phenomenon presents the deceased as a ‘collector’ of prestigious objects which is a vastly anachronistic notion for understanding this period. Instead, this thesis proposes that assemblages of multiple signet rings and sealstones in funerary contexts are the result of the ritualized bestowal of these objects by relatives, dependents, and close associates of the deceased as a form of ritual lament. Through the microanalysis of these miniature objects, I demonstrate that the signet rings and sealstones comprising these assemblages are likely the results of different commissions. Although some of these objects share iconographic themes, I argue that subtle differences in their material, stylistic, and technical aspects demonstrate their individuality above all else and likely reflects multiple owners rather than a singular ‘collector.’ This material approach to signet rings and sealstones is then supplemented by anthropological theories of embodiment and inalienability which explore how certain objects may possess a piece of one’s identity or serve as an extension of one’s body. I then reconstruct the emotional and sensorial impact that depositing these objects in the tomb with the deceased would have had on the mourners as a form of ritual lament and remembrance. With these complementary approaches, multiple signet rings and sealstones in the tomb become more than the vestiges of the deceased’s status, but the material traces of delicate power negotiations during the turbulent socio-political period of LH II–IIIA1.