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).

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 series of radiocarbon dates for Early Bronze Age contexts from the excavations at Kouphovouno are published for the first time. By adopting a Bayesian modelling approach, the 14C estimates allow greater precision in arriving at an absolute chronology for the period. The opportunity is taken to place these dates as part of the more general development of the Early Bronze period. The sequence for mainland Greece is compared with the recently revised dating of the Early Cycladic period. The new data support a lower chronology than that advocated in recent publications.

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.

Since the publication of Brückner's Der Friedhof am Eridanos in 1909, describing twenty grave enclosures of fourth-century date aligning the so-called Weststraβe or Street of Tombs in the Kerameikos, numerous other periboloi have been discovered, not least in the course of rescue excavations carried out in and around Athens.

This paper represents an attempt to catalogue topographically all the periboloi which have come to light in Attica of Classical date. Although the reports of their excavation are often tantalizingly brief, such excavations as those conducted at Rhamnous under V. Petrakos of a group of periboloi extending for a distance of over a mile and a half, are beginning to clarify the more fragmentary impression which one inevitably obtains from Athens itself.

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.

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).

In this paper – the revised text of a public lecture given in Athens on 23 February 1989 – the author reviews both the historical and anatomical evidence for identifying the occupants of the royal tombs at Vergina as: Tomb I: not known; Tomb II: Philip II and either Cleopatra or Meda; Tomb III: Alexander IV. The case for Philip III Arrhidaios and Eurydice in Tomb II is shown to be anthropologically weak. The paper also includes a catalogue of the human remains from Tomb II antechamber (Cleopatra or Meda) and Tomb III (Alexander IV). The arrival of cremation in Greece, and both Homeric and later Macedonian attitudes to the rite are also discussed. The general conclusion is that cremations are a valuable source of biological and archaeological information.

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.

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.

Everyone who has the slightest acquaintance with the Crimea at the present time, and especially with the economic conditions which prevail there, is thoroughly aware of its intimate connexion, both economic and social, with the southern coast of the Black Sea—with Samsun, Eregli, Sinope, Kerasund, Trebizond and other towns. Great masses of workmen from these parts flood the cities of the Crimea. Practically all shipments by sea in vessels of small displacement are carried out by the owners of feluccas, who hail from the municipal centres of ancient Pontus and from the neighbouring sea-towns of what was once Bithynia. A glance at the map is sufficient to show that there is no casual connexion here; the close interconnexion between the shores of the Crimea and the southern coast of the Black Sea, which is almost visible with the naked eye from the southernmost point of the Crimea, has been brought about by the natural conditions of the locality. The decline in the prosperity of the southern Turkish coast of the Black Sea and the great prosperity of the Crimea in the years immediately preceding the war were the chief reasons why the Crimea played the part of employer, and the sea towns of the southern coast the part of supplier of labour. They provided as well the necessary tonnage for coastwise shipping, mostly in the shape of small sailing vessels. Such could not always be the case, nor indeed have such conditions continuously prevailed, although, generally speaking, similar relations must needs be established quite independent of the fortune assigned by history to the districts with which we are now dealing.

The existence of agonistic festivals in Boiotia in the first half of the first century B.C. is well attested by inscriptions, many of them collected in the pages of IG vii, which appeared in 1892, and others published as a result of subsequent archaeological discoveries. Foremost in this field were the French scholars who conducted important excavations in the neighbourhood of Thespiai, at the Ptoïon and elsewhere. In his IG commentaries Dittenberger laid the foundations of a relative chronology for these inscriptions, and many supplementary details have been added from time to time by various French scholars. The value of this epigraphical evidence for an understanding of Boiotian affairs in the first half of the first century B.C. can be still further enhanced if the chronological relationships of the inscriptions are defined more precisely, and especially if it can be shown which of them belong to the period before, and which to the period after, the Mithridatic War.

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.

The lead figurines from recent excavations at the shrine of Helen and Menelaus are discussed, excluding those in the form of wreaths, which were well over half the total of almost 6,000. Five hundred and sixty-one moulds are distinguished, divided between sixty-one varieties. A chronology is attempted on the basis of three methods, stratigraphy, seriation, and typology and a tentative sequence is proposed.

My first literary pilgrimage to the Ionian islands took place six years ago. I still find them an attractive field for research, and the present paper records observations made among them during two very pleasant summers. In this connection I would recall the fact that both Professor Chadwick and Professor Childe have indicated the importance of a study of North-West Greece for the better understanding of the coming of the Greeks.

At Easter 1981, as part of a joint Greek-British investigation of the region of ‘Toumba’ at Lefkandi in Euboea, a further area of the known cemetery there was excavated. The Greek Archaeological Service was represented by Mrs. E. Touloupa, previously Ephor of Euboea, and the British School by M. R. Popham and L. H. Sackett: the operation was under the general supervision of the Ephor, Mr. P. Kalligas.

Since the results of the previous excavations in this and the other cemeteries have recently been published with a full commentary, we have decided to give a quick and more summary account of the new finds as a supplement to the main publication to which reference is made for detailed discussion.

The morphology of the Vouliagmeni Lake and Perachora coasts is the result of seismic uplifts with a cumulative amplitude of 3–4 m in the last 6,000 years; there is also evidence of a transient seismic subsidence at around 5,000 BP. These results are consistent with excavation data indicating a seismic destruction of an EH I site followed by land subsidence. This led to the abandonment of the site, which was reoccupied when the land was uplifted again.

In the store-rooms of the British Museum is kept a fragment belonging to a lead plaque which bears the traces of an inscription written boustrophedon in the Corinthian alphabet. This lead plaque was part of the collection of J. Woodhouse, which was made in Corfu, and following the death of the collector in 1866 was bequeathed to the British Museum.

In 1868 the plaque was catalogued and described in the Museum's Register. According to a sketch, also included, it is clear that at that time more of it was preserved and that besides the upper and lower edge possibly the right end was also retained. It was described as containing seven lines of a boustrophedon inscription, of which only the first, second, and seventh lines were transcribed. The inscription was incomprehensible, and that may have been the reason for its not being published hitherto.

Work at Palaikastro in the 1994 and 1996 seasons was concentrated in Building 6 in the southern area adjacent to Main Street, where tests had previously been made in 1990–1. It was confirmed that the architectural history of the area ended before the Santorini eruption. Its later use as a walled open space was marked by the construction in LM IB of two wells. These were fully excavated and were very productive of useful stratified material. The principal building complex lay to the SE and comprised a propylon and a small central court with colonnade and surrounding rooms. The most important of these is a paved hall at the south entered by a pier and door system of Knossian type. All these features, as well as unusual decorative elements, including building materials of varying colour, frescoes and horns of consecration, distinguish this building from others at Palaikastro. The date of first construction seems to be MM IIIA (over an earlier MM II building), but this was followed by a destruction and major rebuild in MM IIIB, the period to which many of these decorative elements should belong. A violent destruction by earthquake later in MM IIIB left substantial pottery deposits in several areas of the building, which seems to have been only partially repaired before a final destruction took place. This was followed by deliberate dismantling (LM IA early?) which was far advanced when the tephra fell on an essentially abandoned plot.