The system is described in detail with reference to the first stone-by-stone plans and photographs of the interior. An analysis of function concludes that the main aim of the system when constructed in Middle Minoan IIA was to drain the Central Court; this remained its primary function until at least Late Minoan I. During the great building programme of Middle Minoan IIIA, the system was expanded to serve new Light Wells, with further additions before the south part of the drains was blocked sometime during Late Minoan I. Next, a stone U-shaped channel was installed to allow the north section to function; the destruction of Late Minoan IIIA:2 is likely to have caused the final blockage of the system.

The Ionic Black Figure pottery at Old Smyrna is a fragmentary body of material and it is of no very great bulk; so there is no certainty that it is fully representative of the wares current in North Ionia in the sixth century or that it gives a reliable indication of their relative frequency. It is worth remark that no Fikellura came to light. The material here published was divided into classes after the conclusion of the excavations and the photographs were taken. The classification then adopted was a subjective one and not entirely satisfactory. The isolation (in Section A) of what seemed to be conscious imitation of Attic Black Figure may be useful; it could be improved in detail, but at least it does not cut across other divisions. For the rest, the section (E) headed ‘Clazomenian’ ought on any count to have embraced more of the material, and the boundary between Sections B (‘North Ionic Styles’) and C (the North Ionic Column Kraters) is a rather arbitrary one. But there would have been obvious dangers in a rearrangement made without full recourse to the material itself; for due attention must be paid to the physical appearance of the wares. So the original classification has been retained.

Ancient tradition, as recorded by Strabo and Pausanias, placed the Seven Cities offered by Agamemnon to Achilles in the area of the shores of the Messenian Gulf, between Kardamyle on the south-east and Methone on the south-west. The phrase πᾶσαι δ᾿ ἐγγὺς ἁλός roughly confines them to the coastal area, but it need not exclude identifications with sites farther inland, provided that these are not too far distant from the sea, and are connected with it by easy routes. For example, Kambos (?Ἐνόπη) and the site of the classical Thouria (?Ἄνθεια or Αἴπεια) lie 5 kilometres and 6 kilometres inland respectively, but their territory may have extended towards the coast, and the distance from the sea is not great. I have assumed as a working hypothesis that the Seven Cities actually existed in the Late Mycenaean Period, although possibly with slightly different names, and although they are not mentioned in the Achaean Catalogue of Ships in the Iliad; and I have taken the position of Mycenaean sites in the area to be the most relevant factor to the problem of locating the Seven Cities.

I have carried out surface exploration in south Messenia over a period of five to six weeks with the purpose of finding out the pattern of the Mycenaean and earlier occupation of the district on the shores of the Messenian Gulf, and I shall give an account of the results obtained at each site, together with a discussion of previous work carried out by others, and then compare the facts with the testimony of the ancient writers, in particular Strabo and Pausanias, before stating my conclusions as to the locations of the Seven Cities, and attempting to reconstruct their history. The relevant sites will be discussed in geographical order from south-east to south-west. (See the map of the area, Fig. 1.)

This article is the third in a series inspired by the rediscovery in 2003 of two skeletons excavated in 1877 in Shaft Grave VI in Circle A at Mycenae by Panayiotis Stamatakis. Having studied those two individuals and reconstructed their faces, and having conducted a study of strontium isotope analyses on all the individuals from Grave Circle A, we now move on to a reconsideration of the circumstances in which Shaft Graves III, IV, and V were excavated by Schliemann and Stamatakis, and place the human remains in the context of the other finds from the graves (no human remains from Graves I and II can be located at present). We then describe the first study of the skeletons themselves since Angel's work in 1937, and reassess them in the light of modern osteological techniques and theories.

To παρόν άρθρο είναν το τρίτο μιας σειράς άρθρων εμπνευσμένων από την εκ νέου ανακάλυψη, το 2003, σύο σκελετών που ανέσκαψε ο Παναγιώτης Σταματάκης το 1877 στο Λακκοεισή Tάφο VI του Tαφικού Kύκλου A των Μυκηνών. ´Eχοντας ήδη μελετήσει τα οστά αυτών των σύο ατόμων και αποκαταστήσει τα πρόσωπά τους, και έχοντας εφαρμόσει αναλύσεις για την ανίχνευση τησ ισοτοπικής αναλογίας του στροντίου σε δείγματα από την πλειοψηφία των ατόμων του Tαφικού Kύκλου A, προχωρούμε τώρα σε μια επαναδιερεύνηση των συνθηκών υπό τις οποίες ανασκάφηκαν οι Λακκοειδείς Tάφοι III, IV, και V από τους Schliemann και Σταματάκη, και συσχετίςουμε τα ανθρώπινα σκελετικά υπολείμματα με τα υπόλοιπα ευρήματα από τους τάφους (δεν έχουν ακόμη εντοπιστεί σκελετικά υπολείμματα από τους Tάφους I και II). Στη συνέχεια περιγράφουμε τα αποτελέσματα της πρώτης, μετά από εκείνη του Angel το 1937, μελέτης αυτών των ανθρωπίνων σκελετικών υπολείμμάτων, επανεξετάςοντάς τα σύμφωνα με ςύγχρονες οστεοαρχαιολογικές θεωρίες, μεθόδους και τεχνικές, με τελικό στόχο την ανασύνθεση του τρόπου ςωής των ατόμων που είχαν ταφεί στον Tαφικό Kύκλο Α.

We resumed work on March 23, 1903. The headquarters of the expedition were again at Angathia. Mr M. N. Tod, Assistant-Director of the School and Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford, had preceded me, going overland. Mr W. L. H. Duckworth, Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge, and University Lecturer in Anthropology, and Mr R. McG. Dawkins, Scholar of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, arrived a few days later. Mr C. T. Currelly, of Victoria College, Toronto, who had been digging for the Egypt Exploration Fund under Professor Petrie, joined us for the last six weeks of the season.

The Roussolakkos trenches being full of water, I decided to start work at Kouraménos on a bay 1½ miles further north, where in 1902 I had seen the foundations of a wall running inland from the sea, enclosing the best part of the plain at the head of the bay and rejoining the sea half a mile beyond. It seemed possible that this was the wall mentioned in the Toplu inscription (Dittenberger, Sylloge2, ii. 929) as enclosing the precinct of Dictaean Zeus, the more so as large blocks were visible on rising ground near the sea. It proved however to have been a τέμενος only in the Homeric sense of an enclosed estate. The excavation gave us the ground-plan of a Mycenaean farmstead, described in detail below (p. 329) by Mr Tod and Mr Dawkins.

In the first chapter of Perachora i, Humfry Payne gave a brief survey of the Perachora peninsula, and of his own excavations. There he distinguished between the area of the town, situated in the plain that lies between Lake Vouliagmeni and the tip of the promontory, and the ‘Heraion Valley’ whose buildings were almost wholly of a public nature. His description of the town envisaged further excavation; but his own activities were concentrated in the area of public buildings, the two sanctuaries of Hera Akraia by the harbour and of Hera Limenia in the Heraion valley itself.

The two volumes of Perachora are concerned with the discoveries Payne made in these two sanctuaries. Omitted from them are the other public buildings in or adjacent to the sanctuaries. These consist of the angled stoa, the so-called ‘agora’, the double-apsidal cistern, and the hestiatorion or dining-hall. Also omitted is the detailed study of the town which he promised. The stoa and ‘agora’ (which is now to be renamed ‘the west court’, since, whatever its actual function, it was certainly not an agora) have now been published separately by Dr. J. J. Coulton. The present account gathers together the remaining public buildings in the vicinity of the sanctuaries, the apsidal cistern and the hestiatorion, together with the ancient remains in the area of the town.

The faces of seven skulls from Grave Circle B were reconstructed by the Manchester team, as an exercise in using the technique of facial reconstruction to look for family relationships on the basis of facial resemblances among the three or four burial groups within the circle. Similarities were noted between Ζ59 and Γ51, from early and late phases respectively; and between Γ55 (the man with the electrum mask) and his female tomb companion Γ58, both having a quite different facial structure from Γ51 but sharing features with A62, a late-phase burial from a different part of the circle. The skulls from the early burials Σ131 and Β52 showed only slight similarities to the others.

The archaeological record from the seventh century in Attica poses acute problems of interpretation. Burial conventions and burial numbers show a sharp change at the end of the eighth century; there is discontinuity in the settlement record; activity at cult sites increases quite markedly; and the manner of artistic expression changes. Simple hypotheses which connect these changes with the birth of the polis or with political and social crisis cannot explain all these changes. One way forward may be to make the change in artistic expression central to interpretation instead of marginal.

A little to the south of Sparta and opposite the hamlet of Psychiko, at the point where the Magoula river runs into the Eurotas, the hills on the left or eastern bank of the latter approach quite close to the river. These hills, which stand high above the plain, have long been identified with those on which, according to Polybius, the Menelaion stood, and as the site of Therapnai. In fact the statements of this author and of Livy make it practically certain that these are the hills in question. They were first explored by Ross in 1833, and he claimed as the shrine of Helen and Menelaos the building that he began to excavate on the principal peak close to the modern chapel of Hagios Elias, and directly above the Eurotas. No other Greek building has yet been found on these heights, so that we may for the present assume with considerable probability that this one, discovered by Ross, is the shrine of Helen and Menelaos mentioned by Herodotus and Pausanias.

A Strange and unusual relic of ancient times in Crete is the tank cut in the rock near the sea for storing fish alive. Sinclair Hood and John L. Leatham some years ago made a detailed study of remains of fish tanks on the northern coast of Crete. These tanks belong to two groups, one at Chersonesos in central Crete, with a row of three tanks of various sizes, and one on the shore opposite the island of Mochlos in eastern Crete, with two adjacent and almost identical compartments. The authors date the tanks to Roman times and interpret them with the help of a rich documentation from ancient sources, mainly the two Roman agricultural writers Columella (viii. 16–17) and Varro (iii. 17).

Trench V of the 1927 excavations of the British Academy in the Hippodrome of Constantinople was located just beyond the tomb of Ahmet I, in the direction of St. Sophia. With two extensions (VA and VE) it became a considerable excavation, which uncovered a series of massive piers of brick interrupted by occasional courses of stone. These the excavators identified as part of the Baths of Zeuxippus. In 1928 they uncovered more of the building and, to the south-east of it, part of a separate portico with a large exedra. This second building fitted the identification, as part of the connected gymnasium, particularly when two pedestals were found inscribed with the names of Hecuba and Aeschines, both of whom are known to have had statues there.

Objections to the identification have been raised; notably on the grounds that the excavators found no water-tanks or hypocausts. This particular objection was removed in 1952 by the discovery near by, during the laying of a sewer, of connected structures; for these included a plastered cistern and basins. In a recent review of the topography of the approaches to the Great Palace the identification is accepted; nor does it appear to be invalidated by any of the testimonia relating to the Baths of Zeuxippus which have lately been collected.

The purpose of this article is to correct and expand our understanding of an interrelated group of socially prominent families from Roman Sparta and Epidaurus. Part I publishes an inscription from Sparta, dating to about 240, which attests new members of the Spartan families of the Claudii and the Pomponii: respectively Claudia Tyrannis, a great-granddaughter of the senator Tib. Claudius Brasidas, and C. Pomponius Aristeas qui et Pericles, her husband. At the same time, a revised account is offered of the Claudii and of a further four Spartan families to which they were related: the Memmii, the Voluseni, the Aelii, and the Pompeii. Part II re-examines the evidence for the Epidaurian family of the Statilii. Apart from the new inscription, more recent work on the epigraphic corpora from Sparta and the Asclepieum, the possibility of reinterpreting the older material, and the need to take hitherto neglected documents into account, together seem to justify a fresh treatment of these families. The resulting study, as well as providing up-to-date family histories, includes many corrections on detailed points of local epigraphy, chronology, and prosopography.

The 2008 excavations on the small island of Dhaskalio opposite Dhaskalio Kavos on the Cycladic island of Keros are reviewed. An account is given of the survey, recording many walls of the early Bronze Age, and of the excavations, continued from the 2007 season. Excavations at the summit of Dhaskalio revealed a substantial building 16 m long and 4 m wide, within which was discovered the ‘Dhaskalio hoard’ comprising a chisel, an axe-adze, and a shaft-hole axe of copper or bronze. Study of the pottery reveals continuity, within which a sequence of three phases within the Early Cycladic II and III periods can be established.

Excavations were continued and concluded within the Special Deposit at Kavos South with the recovery of many more special but fragmentary materials including marble vessels and figurines. Specialist studies for the geomorphology, geology, petrology, ceramic petrology, metallurgy and environmental aspects (botanical and faunal remains, phytoliths) are in progress. No more fieldwork is planned prior to final publication of the 2006 to 2008 seasons.

Στο άρθρο ετηχειρείται ένας συνοπτικός απολογισμός των ανασκαφών της περιόδου του 2008 στην νησΐδα Δασκαλιό, απέναντι από τον Κάβο Δασκαλιού, στο ΝΔ άκρο της νήσου Κέρου, των Κυκλάδων. Περιληππκά αναφέρονται τα αποτελέσματα της τοπογράφησης με τον εντοπισμό πολλών τοίχων της Πρώψης Εποχής του Χαλκού, αλλά και αυτά της ανασκαφής, η οποία αποτελεί την συνέχεια των ανασκαφών του 2007. Κατά τις ανασκαφές στην κορυφή του Δασκαλιού αποκαλύφθηκε ένα ευμέγεθες κτήριο μήκους 16 μέτρων και πλάτους 4 μέτρων, εντός του οποίου βρέθηκε ο ‘Θησαυρός του Δασκαλχού’, ο οποίος αποτελείται από μία σμίλη, μία αξίνα-πέλεκυ, κοα έναν πέλεκυ με συμφυή οττή για την τοποθέτηση του στειλεού, όλα χάλκινα ή μπρούτζινα. Η μελέτη της κεραμικής απέφερε σημαντικά αποτελέσματα και απέδειξε ότι υπάρχει συνέχεια. Η αυτή ίδια μελέτη κατέδειξε μία ακολουθία τριών φάσεων, οι οποίες χρονολογήθηκαν από την Πρωτοκυκλαδική II έως και την Πρωτοκυκλαδική III περίοδο.

Οι ανασκαφές στον Κάβο Δασκαλιού συνεχίστηκαν και ολοκληρώθηκαν στην περιοχή της Νότιας Ειδικής Απόθεσης με την αποκάλυψη πλήθους ιδιαίτερων, αλλά αποσπασματικά σωζόμενων, ευρημάτων, μεταξύ των οποίων, πολλών μαρμάρινων αγγείων και ενδοίλίων.

Οι εξειδικευμένες μνκρομορφολογικές-γεωαρχαιολογικές, γεωλογικές και πετρογραφικές μελέτες, αλλά και οι αναλύσεις πηλού και οι μελέτες, που αφορούν στην αρχαιομεταλλουργία και στο παλαιοπεριβάλλον (αναλύσεις των καταλοίπων της χλωρίδας και της πανίδας αλλά και των φυτολίθων), βρίσκονται σε εξέλιξη. Άλλες έρευνες επί του εδάφους προς το ηαρόν δεν προγραμματίζονται, πριν από την ολοκλήρωση της τελικής δημοσίευσης των αποτελεσμάτων των ερευνών των περιόδων 2006 έως και 2008.

Two seasons of fieldwalking were undertaken in the environs of the city of Praisos in Eastern Crete in 1993 and 1994. This is a preliminary report on the results. The topography of the area is described, as are the survey methods used. Finds include sites of FN/EM I date; MM ‘megalithic’ structures and one possible sanctuary; few remains of Neopalatial date. Attention is concentrated on the LM III, PG, G and Orientalising periods which saw a movement of settlement from the refuge settlement of Kypia above Kalamafki to Praisos itself. The urban survey of 1994 indicates that Praisos was a considerable settlement well before the Classical period, and there seems to be some overlap in the periods in which Kypia and Praisos were occupied. Further work was also undertaken on the Classical and Hellenistic periods in the Praisos area. Later periods have proven more difficult to pin down through analysis of their surface remains.

In my recent book Epirus, published in June 1967, I have dealt with the finds from the tumuli of North Epirus at Vajzë, Vodhinë, Bodrishtë, and Kakavi which were excavated in 1954 and 1955 and reported in Albanian in the Buletin per Shkencat Shoquërore (referred to hereafter as BUSS) 1956, 1. 180 ff.; 1957, 2. 76 ff.; and 1959, 2. 190 ff. It was in 1963 that I first heard of this journal and late in 1964 that I obtained an offprint of the Vajzë report through the kindness of the excavator, Professor Frano Prendi. He dated the tumuli and their contents to the transition from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age and to the early centuries of the Iron Age, but I have advanced the view in my book that the earliest of these tumuli and the earliest burials in such tumuli date to the Middle Helladic period. When this went to press in December 1964, I was able to publish also a few objects from the tumuli of the Mati valley which were illustrated in the same journal for 1955, and appeared to be of Middle Helladic date but had been dated by the excavator to the end of the Bronze Age at the earliest. Late in 1965 I was sent by Professor Frano Prendi a copy of a new Albanian periodical Studia Albanica, no. i of 1964. Here the same dates were given for the tumuli of North Epirus and of the Mati valley but reference was made for the first time in my experience to a Middle Helladic dating of tumuli and of objects which had been found at Pazhok. This material was too late to be included in my book. As the evidence at Pazhok is conclusive for the Middle Helladic dating, I give a summary of the brief report, which this time was in French, and I reproduce the illustrations which were not of a high standard. The reports of all these excavations have escaped the notice of scholars in the western countries, so far as I am aware. The Pazhok report runs as follows (with my numbering of paragraphs and a few comments).

There is no doubt that during the historical period Cyprus was a copper-mining centre of great importance; not only does the literary evidence testify to this, but also the large slag-heaps found in many parts of the island. It is not our intention, however, to treat of this period, but to examine how far Cyprus produced copper during the bronze age.

Prof. Gjerstad has, in his Studies on Prehistoric Cyprus, shewn that at least till the end of the bronze age there seems to be no racial change in the population, the cultural development being steady. During Late Cypriot II and III, however, Mycenean ware and its local imitations become so frequent that it is likely that Mycenean overlords were ruling in Cyprus; such a state of affairs fits in well with Mycenean history of this time, and probably now Cyprus began to be hellenised.

These five tombs, discovered by chance during the last two years, have an importance out of all proportion to their size and the wealth of their contents. They comprise (see Map, Fig. 1) (1) at Ayios Ioannis, a solitary ‘shaft-grave’ with bronze weapons of early Late Minoan type, but no vases; and (2) on the site of the new Hospital, a group of four tombs (three ‘chamber-tombs’ and a ‘shaft-grave’) containing bronze weapons, together with Late Minoan II vases which provide much fresh information about the pottery of the period.

None of the five tombs had held more than one, or at the most two, bodies: that at Ayios Ioannis, and all except Tomb I on the Hospital site, evidently belonged to warriors buried with their arms. The bronze helmet from Tomb V (see p. 256 and Plates 50–52) is not only the first of the Bronze Age from Crete, but the only one of its type from the Aegean; and it has important bearings upon the origins of early metal helmets in the rest of Europe to the west and north.

Among over 1800 boxes of Sir Arthur Evans's finds now stored in the Stratigraphical Museum at Knossos, at least 150 contain Greek pottery from Subminoan to Classical. A systematic study of this material, in relation to its recorded find spots, throws new light on the eastern part of the early Greek town, bordering the site of the Minoan Palace. Above the Palace itself, fresh evidence is produced, and fresh interpretation offered, for the Greek sanctuary described by Evans. In its immediate surroundings, there are signs of busy domestic and industrial life in the early Greek town above the South-West Houses, the West Court, the Theatral Area, and the Pillared Hall outside the North Entrance to the Palace. Greek occupation is also noted above the House of Frescoes, the Little Palace and the Royal Villa. A wider aim of this article is to trace the limits of the early Greek town of Knossos, both of its original Early Iron Age nucleus surviving from Late Minoan times, and of its spacious extension towards the north in the late eighth and seventh centuries BC.

The site of Kouphovouno, just south of Sparta, is one of the main Neolithic sites in Laconia. It was first settled in the Middle Neolithic period and developed into a large village with remains occupying some 4–5 hectares. A joint team from the British School at Athens and the Ecole française d'Athènes carried out excavations at the site in 2001–6. There is evidence for occupation during the Bronze Age, and for an extensive Late Roman villa, but this article concentrates on the chronology of the site during the Middle and Late Neolithic phases. The evidence from stratigraphic sequences, pottery typology, seriation and Bayesian analysis of the radiocarbon dates is brought together to present a detailed chronological sequence covering the period c.5800–5000 bc. In particular the analysis relies on the results from two deep soundings, one excavated in Area C carried down to the natural sediments underlying the site and exposing the earliest period of occupation, and the second in Area G covering the later Middle Neolithic and much of the Late Neolithic phase. The findings from Kouphovouno are placed more generally in the context of finds from other sites in the Peloponnese and in particular in relation to the important sequence from Franchthi Cave. On the basis of the evidence it is argued that the transition from Middle Neolithic to Late Neolithic in southern Greece was not abrupt, as had previously been thought, but showed a gradual evolution. This finding has implications for our understanding of the process of transformation that southern Greece underwent in the course of the later sixth millennium bc.

This article examines the methods of surface treatment of the Neolithic vessels from northern Greece. The work is based on the study of a large sample of ceramics, covering the whole span of the Neolithic, from Macedonia and Thrace. Macroscopic study of the material was complemented by microscopic examination (SEM and petrographic analysis) and retiring tests. The results are compared with data from other technological analyses of Neolithic vessels from northern Greece. Apart from identifying, in some cases for the first time, methods of surface treatment and materials used by the potters of these regions, the present study considers the changes in surface treatment and firing techniques through time.