It may safely be said that of no prehistoric city on Hellenic soil are such extensive remains extant above ground as of the Cretan Goulàs. The walls, indeed, are not so massive as those of Tiryns, there is no single monument to fix the attention like the Lions' Gate at Mycenæ, nor has excavation as yet done anything to add to what meets the eye on the surface of the earth. But for the mass of primeval ruins, the still-standing remains of individual dwelling-houses, the number of distinct quarters within the walls and the area they occupy, Goulàs is without a rival. Its site, moreover, with its twin citadel peaks—the northern one looking down over a thousand feet sheer to the valley below—is more commanding than that of any sister city.

The pottery which forms the main subject of this article was found during the 1964 and 1968 Citadel House excavations beneath the floor of two rooms that were designated Rooms 21 and 22. All the pottery from Room 22 has been kept, including the unpainted sherds, so that the group can be analysed numerically and compared with other groups of LH IIIB pottery from the Argolid. It contains a small quantity of painted wares and a large group of undecorated pottery of which a few whole profiles can be restored. The importance of the deposit is that the painted wares provide a date for the building of the South House and thus for the sequence of building in the whole area. Moreover, they give a further selection of patterns current in LH IIIB 1; these show that the group is perhaps a little later than that from Room 3.

The remote date of the researches here described needs a word of explanation and apology.

In the latter part of the year 1913 the Committee of the Cyprus Museum received a Government grant for the purpose of exploratory work on sites selected to illustrate principal periods and aspects of antiquity, and to provide the basis for estimates of the value and the cost of operations on a larger scale. I accepted the invitation of the Committee to supervise this project, and to give to my former pupil at Oxford, Mr. Menelaos Markides, then Keeper of the Cyprus Museum, the personal introduction to field work which might enable him to continue such excavations, on a modest scale, on his own responsibility. As there was some prospect of finding human remains, I obtained from the British Association for the Advancement of Science a small grant to meet the expenses of another friend and pupil, the late Leonard H. D. Buxton of Exeter College, Oxford, who held the Oxford Diploma in Anthropology, and had been engaged in anthropometric work in the excavations of Sir Henry Wellcome at Jebel Moya in the Sudan.

The following paper deals with the historical geography and antiquities of the south-eastern promontory of Laconia from Acriae on the Laconic Gulf to Epidaurus Limera. Most of the country included being within easy reach of the sea, the ‘periplus’ arrangement has been followed, and a concordance of ancient geographers is prefixed to each of the sections.

Two joining sherds of an East Greek ‘proto-Bird Bowl’, found in Dr Andreiomenou's excavations at Eretria, bear a three-line graffito text very similar in structure, if not in content, to that on Nestor's cup from Pithekoussai. The piece must be of approximately the same date.

A few points are illustrated concerning regional Mycenaean pottery from the Greek mainland dating from LHIIA to LHIIIC Late. It has been suggested that the use of certain motifs on certain closed shapes was perhaps as a label for the contents of the vase. Early Mycenaean regional styles in peripheral areas, such as Thessaly and Phocis, are discussed and regional preferences during the LHIIIA2–IIIB koine are mentioned. The influence of Crete on Mycenaean pottery in Laconia and Messenia during these phases is demonstrated. Contacts between the Ionian islands and the north-west Peloponnese with other areas in LHIIIC Late are noted.

This is the second of three articles presenting the settlement pottery of post-Minoan Knossos, found during the British School's excavations of 1951–61 mostly under the direction of Mr. Sinclair Hood. The Protogeometric and Geometric deposits were published in BSA lxvii (1972) 63–98; the final article in the series, to appear in a future volume of BSA, will be devoted to the Classical and Hellenistic material.

Seventy years after its first investigation, Karphi (Karfi) on Crete was the subject of a new pilot excavation in 2008. The main aim was to provide the first up-to-date detailed contextual records for the site across a representative area, thus filling in interpretative gaps left by the original extensive excavation. This paper presents and analyses these records with the aim of investigating the likely complexity of social systems at one of the largest new communities founded in Crete after the collapse of Bronze Age states c.1200 bc. Recent research has tended to focus on small villages, or on sites which later developed into poleis, meaning that crisis-period remains are poorly preserved. Occupied only between the crisis horizon of c.1200 bc and an important nucleation of Cretan communities at large ‘proto-polis’ settlements occurring in the early tenth century, the large Karphi site offers insight into the special challenges of creating large, potentially diverse new communities in crisis circumstances. It has one of the most dramatic of the new settlement locations, on steep-sided peaks 1100 m above sea level in an area which had never previously been settled. The social and economic adjustments needed here were particularly sharp and urgent, and the paper examines the structures which enabled them, using preliminary analyses of bioarchaeological data from the new project to assist reconstruction of the economy. The site has had other, highly specialised uses in its history, on which the new excavation has thrown light. The results highlight not only the resonance of this landscape in ancient consciousness, but also the ways in which such resonance could be exploited, both in the socially volatile post-collapse period and in the context of enhanced social and economic complexity as polis states started to come into being. Finally, a first set of radiocarbon dates from the new excavation is presented and assessed with regard to the dating of the Cretan Bronze to Iron Age transition and its wider ramifications.

We give here a partial account of trial excavations undertaken at Knossos by the British School in autumn 1975 at the request of the Greek Government. The site lay in a field on the south-east flank of the acropolis, immediately above and west of the unmetalled track that runs roughly north–south, leading from the upper part of Knossos (Bougadha Metochi) towards the Venetian aqueduct and, eventually, to Arkhanes (see Site Plan, Fig. 1). The field is the property of the Staphylakis family. Until late summer 1975 it had served as rather low grade arable land, covered with stone apparently eroded from the acropolis. The owner in 1975 applied for permission to deep-plough the land with a view to converting it to an olive-grove.

It has been argued that a foot of c. 0.30 m was used in the design of the Early Iron Age building at Lefkandi. However, deriving the foot-unit length from the preserved measurements is not statistically valid; in this case, proportional analysis is more likely to advance understanding of the building design rather than foot-standard studies. Attempts to determine the building function using direct analogical reasoning are problematic because of the exceptional character of the Toumba building. Based on the archaeological evidence of ritualised collective gatherings, however, a transformation in the communal meaning of the monument is proposed.

Alan Wace and I spent three memorable years together, wellnigh half a century ago, in the British School at Athens, of which he was later to be for nine years the Director. The first book which either of us published was the Catalogue of the Sparta Museum, in the writing of which we collaborated, and I have followed with keen interest his subsequent career as scholar, administrator and teacher. I therefore regard it as a privilege to make a contribution however slight to the volume of the British School Annual which will serve as a tangible expression of his friends' admiration of his past achievements and their heartfelt wishes for his future happiness.

The human remains discovered by Mr. Hogarth in the caves of the Zakro Gorge, and sent to me for identification, consist of three skulls of adults and a fragment of an upper maxillary of a child. The skulls present the following characters. All are well developed, with highly complicated sutures, and wormean bones in the parieto-occipital suture, with thin cranial walls, and without the strong muscular impressions and ridges, usually met with in prehistoric skulls, and present in all living uncivilised peoples.

The paper describes a small ancient quarry in white and red variegated marble, located near Sitia in Eastern Crete. By examining the geological setting of marble occurrences in the district, and comparing the style of stoneworking with those reported from other ancient quarrying sites, it is possible to assess the viability of Cretan marble as a local building material in Classical times, and to speculate upon the role of one particular small quarry in providing such building material.

During the last three decades, wooden coffins have come to light in increasing numbers in graves of the earlier phases of the Late Minoan period, especially in the area of Knossos. When their form and dimensions can be discerned, they often belong to a type that is or imitates a chest for household use. Sinclair Hood, Ingo Pini, and Bogdan Rutkowski, who have dealt with these coffins, agree on their general similarity to the clay larnakes of the type called chest-larnakes that are so common in the LM III graves of central and western Crete, and for which wooden prototypes are generally assumed. Hood and Pini also stress that the wooden coffins belong to a different tradition from that of the earlier, Middle Minoan, clay larnakes, but that the origin of the type is unknown. Rutkowski thinks that the wooden coffin was ‘a subsequent development of the M.M. rectangular larnax made of clay’. Common to all three is that they see the use of the wooden coffin as a purely Minoan phenomenon, in line with the tradition of larnakes from Early Minoan onwards till the end of the Bronze Age. They note in passing that there are a few examples of sarcophagi of wood, stone, and terracotta on the Mycenaean mainland, but attribute their occurrence to Minoan influence.

Whatever absolute dates are to be attached to the L.H. IIIA 1 period, its historical significance is indisputable. At present this significance derives mainly from events outside Greece itself, the fall of Knossos and the disruption in the Aegean area which went before it. On the mainland, although in South Greece no major event can be associated with the period, in Boeotia the fall of the palace at Thebes has been dated to L.H. IIIA 1 and has been a source of much speculation.

This article is based on a set of notes written by Sir Arthur Evans on the objects retrieved from a pit found under the gypsum floor of the Vat Room, known as the ‘Vat Room Deposit’. Evans made annotated drawings of the most important objects, stressing notable features and often recording the total number of similar objects. Objects which were not published by Evans have now been identified through these notes and appear here for the first time.

A miscalculation in the analysis of population statistics for the island of Melos made by Wagstaff, Augustson, and Gamble in their work An Island Polity is discussed. A new calculation is made of the areas under agriculture required to support the given population of Melos at a sequence of dates ranging from A.D. 1470 to A.D. 1848. It is argued that the ancient population of Melos could have been supported by a smaller area of arable land than that previously suggested, and that in arriving at this figure the relative fertility of the island should also be taken into account.

Apart from the rather summary excavation on the summit of Aetós by Gell at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and the opening of some tombs above Pisaetó by Guitara in 1811–14, excavations have been made in Ithaca on three occasions previously to Lord Rennell's expedition.

In the course of two visits, one in 1868 and the other in 1878, Schliemann dug trial trenches in the plain at Pólis, at the ‘School of Homer’, at Aetós (both on the saddle and on the summit), at the cave of Dexiá, and at Marathiá. The work was carried out at great speed, and it is not always easy to make out from his description the precise nature of the objects found; nor is it known what has become of them. It is clear, however, that nothing Mycenaean was found.

It is argued that the painting in the Stoa Poikile described by Pausanias as an engagement between Athenians and Spartans at Argive Oenoe in fact refers to Oenoe in Attica, and depicted the arrival of the Plataean contingent prior to the battle of Marathon. The dependence of Herodotus on the paintings in the Stoa Poikile for his account of Marathon is discussed.

A second season of new excavations was undertaken at Palaikastro in 1987 in the area of Building 1, partially revealed last year, and in the adjacent fields to the south. Two new structures were denned, Buildings 3 and 4, and most of the plan of Building 1 traced. Features suggesting that Building 1 was public and played a role in the religious life of the town in LM I are the high quality of its construction, a possible grandstand with stone horns of consecration, a large well-built drain at the entrance, its unique orientation, and the discovery of the torso and arms of a male chryselephantine statuette fallen from an upper storey into an open area near the building. The other buildings are not yet well-defined. Building 3 was constructed in LM I and re-occupied in LM III, but no inner partition walls have been found. An area with pier-and-door partitions and mudbrick walls was built against the southwest wall of the building and destroyed in LM IB. Building 4 seems to belong to the LM III period, although we have not yet investigated below the floors of the re-occupation period. Destruction deposits of the LM IIIA2/B period suggest an earthquake.