Abstract
The topic of intramural infant container burials of Late Bronze Age Crete has been largely neglected in recent scholarship. Despite the near-ubiquity of the practice in various ancient European cultures from the Neolithic era onward, the relatively few examples found in LBA Cretan contexts have not been comprehensively explored. While some scholars have offered theories regarding intramural infant container burials holding some greater significance as representational of birth, rebirth, and fertility, this thesis sets out to better and more thoroughly demonstrate that the specific instances of these burials in LBA Crete were deliberately used to create connections to maternity and fertility, through a holistic examination of archaeological evidence surrounding each example. Instances of intramural infant container burials have been found at the sites of Petras, Sissi, Palaikastro, Phaistos, and Knossos. The evidence from each site is carefully presented and analyzed, with particular attention given to the contextual location of each burial within the domestic setting, and associated vessels and other objects of material culture. Ultimately, I conclude that the deliberate choice to bury these infants in spaces that were primarily dominated by the presence of female domestic work, in vessels often associated with feminine ownership and household industry, at times with objects representing commemoration, birth, and rebirth represents an intentional attempt to forge connections between the death and burial of the infant to the idea of maternity and household fertility.