This article presents the results of the 2008 excavation in the ancient theatre of Sparta conducted by the British School at Athens and the Ephorate of Antiquities of Laconia. Focused on the west side of the cavea, work aimed to locate the southern edge of the Late Antique settlement between the theatre and the sanctuary of Athena Chalkioikos; to establish the northern limits of the Late Antique settlement over the former orchestra; and to establish a more precise ceramic characterisation and chronology for the Early–Middle Byzantine period in Sparta. The area between settlement clusters on the acropolis and over the former orchestra was essentially open, with just a Byzantine terrace wall and path recorded. In the north-west part of the former cavea, a tomb built in the late eighth or early ninth century AD was used at least until the late thirteenth century for the burial of c. 29 individuals. This article presents the first results of a bioarchaeological study of the human remains, and studies of Byzantine pottery from the tomb interior and from the backfill of the pit in which the tomb was built (the latter including a notable quantity of Early Byzantine domestic ware). The 2008 findings are set in the larger context of research on post-antique phases in the theatre (drawing on the British School at Athens Archive) and on the material culture and urban topography of Byzantine Sparta. Almost all excavated contexts contained residual material of all periods. The article concludes with short catalogues of material which pre-dates the construction of the theatre and of inscriptions of all periods.

This paper focuses on a particular group of human figures attested on a number of Late Helladic (LH) IIIA2–B1 pictorial kraters which show specific attributes: they have long hair, wear an elaborate cloak-like robe and bear a sword on their chest. Furthermore, they appear in clearly peaceful representations like chariot or processional scenes. These accurately rendered ‘Sword Bearers’ have so far been assumed to be of male sex due to the presence of the sword; the interpretation proposed here, that they are women, is based on the presence of distinctive female traits as also found on female representations on pictorial vessels and other media of the same period. Particularly striking is the similarity with the enigmatic ‘Sword Bearer’ from the Cult Centre of Mycenae, who is the sole contemporary model of a female figure with a sword wrapped in a long cloak. Though not postulating that these figures are female warriors, attention will be drawn to the fact that weapons have a strong association to the female imagery as well to the sphere of ritual – a sphere in which women played, as is well known, a predominant role in Aegean culture.

The Panagia Houses, one of the building complexes at Mycenae, located to the south-west of the Citadel, were interpreted by the excavators as a group of three independent units. They were constructed and occupied during the Late Helladic (LH) IIIB phase, with two main phases distinguishable in the archaeological record, followed by a reoccupation phase. Careful analysis of the archaeological data published by Mylonas-Shear, which focused on the arrangement of individual units, formality of layout, access and movement patterns, and visibility, suggests that the group should be interpreted rather as a single complex, developed during the period of the maximum expansion of the settlement. The building was gradually expanded to form an extended household, with primary living space surrounded by a number of additional rooms for storage, work and habitation. It was composed of a rectangular main unit, surrounded by an extension formed around a small inner courtyard. The movement between the two levels was organised through a system of connected rooftops, with trapdoors and staircases ensuring access to the various rooms of the complex. During the LH IIIB2 Early phase, Mycenae was hit by a devastating earthquake. Much of the town was left in ruin, but the Panagia Houses were rebuilt, although in a smaller form, with the main unit abandoned and the courtyard inside the extension transformed into the main room of the complex. The status of the complex probably changed, but it was still inhabited by a middle-class family, who possessed a number of valuables and took part in the palatial mobilisation system. The household probably suffered in a widespread fire which destroyed Mycenae at the end of LH IIIB. Its remains were then used as two small dwellings by the survivors of the catastrophe. The history of the complex reflects the changing vicissitudes of the Lower Town of Mycenae.

With the reconstruction of the Prince of the Lilies (also known as Prince with the Lily Crown or Priest-King) from a group of fragments of painted stucco relief found in the palace at Knossos, Arthur Evans and the Gilliérons created not only one of the most famous icons of Crete's early Late Minoan past, but also its most controversial. Addressing a debate that has taken place over the last 45 years, this paper considers the question of the orientation and gesture of the figure, which some scholars would like to see as a right-facing boxer or deity with his left arm extended forward and his right arm bent at the side, rather than the well-known man striding to the left with his right fist on his chest. Focusing on the key relief fragment described by Evans as ‘male torso with the lily collar’, a comparison of the orientation of the eponymous piece of jewellery with contemporary depictions of necklaces conclusively confirms the leftward orientation of the figure to which the torso once belonged. The iconographic analysis of the gesture of the right fist on the chest and of the contextual associations of the waz-lily allow the ‘Man with the waz-Lily Necklace’ to regain his central place in Minoan religious imagery as well as in the monumental relief decoration of the Late Minoan I palace at Knossos.

Using evidence from the Sphakia Survey, a multiperiod archaeological project in south-west Crete, this article has two goals. The first is to contribute to a newly emerging field, the archaeology of sustainability. The investigation of sustainability in Sphakia uses five main kinds of evidence: environmental, archaeological/material, textual, oral, and patterns of activity that seem ‘difficult’ or ‘inconvenient’. Sphakia is a large area of highly dissected terrain with a wide altitudinal range – in many ways, a ‘tough’ landscape, where agropastoralism has been its main economy. The second goal is to introduce the concept of a Resource Package (RP), a combination of perceived resources in an area, as an analytical tool for landscape study. Evidence for identifying agropastoral RPs of various scales, used at a particular time, includes imports, such as pottery and obsidian, which can suggest exchange for a local resource or product; sacred sites; coins; texts and inscriptions; place-names and other toponyms; and maps. The concept of RPs can usefully be applied synchronically and diachronically to multiperiod projects like this, as well as more generally to other landscapes, ‘tough’ or not. Sustainable strategies (that is, maximising resources and RPs without exhausting them) were used in the Prehistoric, Graeco-Roman and Byzantine–Venetian–Turkish epochs in Sphakia; some may be relevant for the future.

In the course of the project ‘Pottery Production and Distribution of Bronze Age Settlements of Mycenaean Greece and the Aegean’ in 1996, Mycenaean pottery from Boeotia in the Archaeological Museum of Thebes was sampled with a view to investigation by neutron activation analysis (NAA). The NAA results were published and analysed in 2002. Ongoing work with new samples and re-evaluation of pre-existing ones, in both cases deriving from several sites of the Mycenaean world, resulted in the reappraisal of the NAA results concerning the Theban material. The present work aims at the archaeological assessment of the sampled material (152 samples from 148 examples) organised into three sections according to their exact findspot: (a) the chamber tomb cemeteries at Agia Anna area (Kolonaki and Mikro Kolonaki hills) and at Ismenion Hill; (b) the House of Kadmos; and (c) habitation areas at the lower south-east and north-west part of Kadmeia Hill. This classification corresponds roughly to the chronology of the examples dated to Middle Helladic and Late Helladic II to Late Helladic IIIC Late. The bulk of the pottery sampled is Mycenaean. A few examples of Handmade Burnished Pottery are included as well as four fragments of rooftiles, an uninscribed fragment of a Linear B tablet and a clay lump intended for a tablet. Twenty-one chemical groups/subgroups/pairs have been identified. The groups assigned to Boeotia comprise numerous examples excavated mainly at the habitation areas and dated to the subphase Late Helladic IIIB2 Late. Imports from the Peloponnese, Euboea and Crete, as well as one from Corfu, have been recognised, as have pieces of unknown provenance and loners. In conclusion, five chemical groups of pottery (TheA, TanA, TheB, ThBC, TheF) are associated with varying degrees of certainty with Boeotian pottery production. Imports came mainly from the north-eastern Peloponnese in Early Mycenaean times and from Euboea in the late palatial and post-palatial periods.

This study examines seascape depictions on pottery, including seafaring and sea creature scenes, from the 1896–9 excavations at Phylakopi on Melos, held in the National Archaeological Museum of Athens. This analysis demonstrates that seascape scenes varied in character through time and were typically associated with vessel shapes connected to the pouring of liquids between Early Cycladic (EC) III and Middle Cycladic late and were later focused on basins. A focus on seafaring is evident in EC III, while later the iconographic focus on the sea concentrates on sea creatures. An iconographic interest in the sea, alongside that of birds and floral depictions, is suggestive of an interest in living forms that inhabit different places to humans (i.e., non-domestic) with different corporeality to humans. This research contributes further to the growing debate on human–animal/plant relationships and ontologies in the Aegean Bronze Age.

This study addresses a longstanding historical and archaeological problem at the central Cretan urban centre of Knossos. This is the so-called ‘Archaic gap’, an apparent dearth of evidence for sixth-century BCE material culture across the extensively excavated city. The concept of a pronounced Knossian decline or recession at this time has been reaffirmed in recent years, with widespread repercussions for Cretan archaeology. By reconsidering ceramics from the Royal Road North and Unexplored Mansion excavations, as well as situating these deposits within their urban and regional contexts, I question the epistemological foundations of the Knossian gap and provide new directions for identifying sixth-century Knossian material culture. I propose that the apparent ‘gap’ is a product of several factors: (1) a relative disinterest in imports in sixth-century Knossos, (2) a dispersed, rather than densely nucleated, urban settlement pattern, and (3) a previously unrecognised conservatism in Knossian ceramics, where some of the ‘Orientalising’ styles traditionally dated to the seventh century were retained into the sixth. This phenomenon of conservatism differs in important ways from the ‘restraint’ or ‘austerity’ that has been previously proposed as characteristic of Archaic and Classical Crete.

Early Bronze Age burial practices in western Anatolia have been much discussed, and the general developmental stages of these traditions have been defined by scholars over the course of years. The first half of the third millennium sees the use of a variety of grave types, namely, stone cist, pithos and simple pit burials; meanwhile, during the second half of the millennium, pithos burials seem to predominate. Short-term rescue excavations at Boyalık, in Çeşme District, Izmir Province, reveal the presence of a new type of burial tradition in coastal western Anatolia dating to the middle of the third millennium BC. The cemetery revealed the use of rock-cut chamber tombs for the first time in this region. This paper presents the unique graves and their finds from Boyalık cemetery and discusses the implications of this new tradition for the third-millennium archaeology of the wider Aegeo-Anatolian region.

The Minoan settlement of Myrtos–Pyrgos on the south coast of Crete has produced five seals (and one unfinished seal), 11 seal impressions on clay vessels, two roundels and one nodulus, as well as two Linear A tablets and two inscriptions on clay vessels. Dating between Early Minoan II and Late Minoan IB, these documents form valuable evidence for the development of sealing, marking and writing practices at a small but important rural settlement, including a penchant for using antique seals for stamping jars. They contribute too to understanding the regional hierarchical and, probably, political cultures of Crete throughout this long period, especially in the late Protopalatial phase of Middle Minoan IIB, when there seems to have been a special relationship with Malia on the north coast, and again in Late Minoan IB, when there was a relationship with Knossos. Finally, the paper discusses a pithos fragment from Tel Haror in Israel, which appears to have an inscription in Cretan Hieroglyphic or Linear A, and may well have been a product of Myrtos or nearby.

Despite Late Bronze Age Aegean art containing a number of depictions of armed women, unacknowledged preconceptions about gender continue to divert thoughts away from past women exercising violent or coercive power, and thus affecting significantly our understanding of Late Bronze Age Aegean societies in general. This paper examines the depiction of armed women in the art of the Late Bronze Age Aegean and considers how previous generations of researchers have chosen to interpret it. The author then uses recent developments in gender theory and political theory to suggest that the connection of women to power needs to be reassessed.

The names of Athenian warships are a valuable source for cultural history, but scholars have long laboured without a sense of how these names were chosen. In a recent article, the present author has suggested that naval architects (master craftsmen elected by the Athenian Assembly) were responsible for naming each vessel they built. This explanation applies to the great majority of Athenian warship names known to us, but exceptions to the rule remain. Naval architects cannot have named vessels they did not build, and we know of several foreign-built ships (e.g., captured or donated ships) in the Athenian fleet. Vessels with the special status of ‘sacred triremes’ must also have followed their own unique naming procedure. Such exceptional cases are the subject of this paper.