Dear Toohey,

I cannot say for sure, but these stones could be altar stones. I have seen similar photographs in one article. You should review literature published on that site if possible.Try to find the researchers working on these sites.

https://archaeologynewsnetwork.blogspot.com/2018/08/new-discoveries-strengthen.html#D74JKp7a8EvwV87p.97

for comparable pictures of altar

They look like as to be related with food practices, milling, making bread or elaborating beverages.

With a brief look, I'm with Joachim. Altar stones were much larger, if I remember correctly. Are they isolated or is there signs of habitation nearby-not high status buildings but lower, much lower?

Hi,

As Bahadur Singh, I also believe it is with religious functions. You can check for Tatul to see pictures.

Thanks to all for your suggestions. I incline more to Joachim's food practices, or marketing suggestion, but remain open to further suggestions. As I said above, I found them at two different points lying in the rubble on the slope you walk up from the end of the great ramp and the inner fortress (photo attached).

Here you follow a winding path through a undifferentiated, and unmarked lines of stone walls. It's heavily overgrown and littered with loose fallen stones like the ones shown, that may have been just placed by the cleared path without any attempt to place them in context. This section appears to have attracted less attention in the excavations, and may therefore belong to a later settlement stage of less interest than that of the Mycenaean remains.

I could imagine that the stone on the photo above had another purpose than the stones on the two photos below. Maybe the first served to fix a wooden post as a support eg. for a roof. The other others seem to be too weak as to have been used in an architectural context. Finaly, we neither know at which moment they were deposited in the context you describe, nor by whom. So we will neve know if their actual placement corresponds to the original one or if the stone where deposited together eg. by the people who excvated this site due to thei identical appearence, although originally the were found elsewhere within the settlement.

Joachim, it seems likely they were part of a generally populated area, their position indicates that, and therefore more likely to have fulfilled a domestic purpose. Other questions as well: the assumption is they are the same age as the status buildings nearby: they could be more recent, as even more recent cultures built in stone: why have they remained when other structures have disappeared?

I think, it would be worthwile to start some serious research on this stones, particularly concering Mykene, and generally, the Mycenean world, and last but not least, other areas. A kind of project would be great, so I hope, institutions would be active in this sense.

By the way, is there any mapping showing the exact position of the stones =

Apologies for not responding earlier, and thanks again for all of your suggestions. I've was working hard on finishing the next chapter of my current project until a couple of days ago.

To address your most recent comments:

I visited the site on a guided tour run by Voyages to Antiquity. While the tour did have a more academic focus, like all tours you had to keep moving, so these shots were all taken on the run. I should have taken a 2nd more distant shot in each case to place the items in context, with the wisdom of hindsight.

I have now attached a picture of the site extracted from Google Earth.

From the sequence of photos I'm pretty sure both photos were taken between the points on the track marked A and C, and most probably between B and C. (My markings.) In the Google Earth shot, the site is quite bare apart from a few trees, so you can see the outlines of several buildings on the slope. They were not apparent when I was there because of the angle of the slope and the fact that it was then heavily overgrown with weeds.

A 1985 guide book for the site (Mycenae-Epidaurus by Prof. S. E. Iakovidis) leaves this area blank on the included map of the acropolis, as do the various maps displayed at the site when I was there. This may be because the buildings there were late additions - there was occupation in the Hellenistic period - or it may be that the area has yet to be properly excavated and investigated.

More later.

Milling stones for grinding grain.

I agree with Joachim's & Dave's suggestions that these are likely "milling stones for grinding grains." You can see analogues in every prehistoric culture around-the-world that processed seeds for food (viz: the trough-metates of the American Southwestern cultures are good examples).

To view images of a wide array of examples, hit this link:

https://www.google.com/search?q=trough+metates&newwindow=1&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjhrtaMpdneAhWIv1MKHXFSDmUQ_AUIDigB&biw=1600&bih=1058

Also see this interesting website:

http://www.lithiccastinglab.com/gallery-pages/2014junegrindingstonespage1.htm

Thank you, Joachim, Dave and Bob. After looking at some of the photos from the links you supplied, Bob. I was initially inclined to agree that the blocks in the second photo may well be milling stones, but an online search for images of Mycenaean milling stones has raised an interesting alternative - that they were olive presses.

Have a look at the photo of a Minoan olive press here:

http://www.minoancrete.com/vathypetro.htm

and this comment "Initially, the crushing of the olives is done by hand in big stone basins, using a round stone to exert pressure" from the Appendix to the article "Remains of olive presses in ancient Thouria of Messenia" here:

https://www.archaeology.wiki/blog/2016/07/06/remains-olive-presses-ancient-thouria-messenia/

It happens that I have seen such relatively recent stone rectangular containers in a village in Valcea department, Romania. They date back to the late 19th century at least and were carved out of sandstone. The craftmanship was quite crude, similar to the ones you posted, with no possibility of adjusting any cover made of yhe same material, which rules out religious functions. Locally, they were used for rainwater storage containers and animal feed containers , especially for horses, cattle and sheep. They were positioned either near a house, in such a way that water from roofs got collected there or near communal water wells. Unfortunately I do not possess any pictures, but I can get some in June 2019. I approximated the dimensions based on vegetation, and they should be 70cm to 1.5m.

There are such hollowed out stones found around PreHispanic Maya sites. They are of various sizes and shapes, but generally squarish and there are rolling pin like stones that were used inside them.. Most are assumed to be used for grinding corn; however, it is possible to analyze the starch in the pores of the stone to find out what they were used for. As an ethnographer I can tell you that people traditionally ground in such stones indentations various things including speleotherms to add to clay to make ceramics, various condiments including chocolate beans, ,achiote seeds, squash seeds and dried chili peppers. Various tree roots and barks were also dried and ground for medicines and dyes. They do not look large enough to me to be used for rainwater collection. Just an opinion.

Known as "patitiria" or "krasopetres" (wine stones) stepping places for crushing grapes to make wine eventually. If you go to Greece as a tourist, you are invited to step too! There would be a hole in some corner for the juice to get collected.

Someone counted them in Calabria (Italy) and found 750 of them scattered over the country made and used by the ancient Greeks there.

Dear Prof. @ Kathleen Tooney,

I noticed from your air photo of Mycenae that the hill has a characteristic shape. As can be seen from the distance as well as from the surrounding hills it resembles the shell of a turtle.

After immigrating to Canada from Greece I ended up teaching American natives. To my surprise, I found out their own language resembles and sometimes is identical to ancient Greek. In "that language" Mycenae means "turtle", it is even a girl's name. I even found out my son's name (Kimon) means "rain" and other things in both N. American and Chile's own native languages.

Anyway, I am not a language expert, but I met some language "experts" who told me, I am driving against a brick wall, trying to compare languages from far-away places. Maybe the DNA analyses might have the final answer.

Thanks Michael for the wine stones suggestion. Am on holidays now, but will give the idea full consideration when I get home.