This paper examines ceramic evidence from Middle Minoan Knossos in an attempt to chart the introduction and development of wheel-throwing technology in Minoan pottery. The technique of wheel-throwing comes into its own in Middle Minoan I B, coeval with the construction of the first palaces and a number of other major changes. Although there are some indications that there could have been some degree of internal evolution towards this point, it also appears that outside contacts with the Near East may have contributed to the innovation process. The main aim is to elucidate the dynamics of choice that led to the adoption and subsequent development of the wheel-throwing innovation. Whilst the use of the wheel is generally considered as a technical development, it is argued here that, in the initial stages, its adoption by certain Minoan potters was as much influenced by socio-political as by technical factors.

Most recent discussions of Minoan colonies have referred to bases, trading posts, or settlements without attempting to define these terms, or to define the term ‘colony’ itself. Welcome exceptions are the papers by Renfrew and Shaw in the publication of the Second Thera Congress, which have sought to put the discussion on a more clearly defined basis. Warren's list of criteria by which to identify a Minoan settlement abroad is also a useful move in the direction of establishing a framework within which the problem can be discussed. This short paper is a preliminary attempt to take recent progress a stage further. It begins with a summary of the development of Minoan trade until the end of LM I, thus placing the ‘colonies’ in a historical perspective. Attention is then given to the problem of defining what is meant by the term ‘colony’, and to suggesting how the different types of colony can be recognized in the archaeological record. Next the settlements at Ayia Irini on Keos, Phylakopi on Melos, and Akrotiri on Thera are briefly examined in the light of their recent excavations in an attempt to match them to one of the ‘models’ of a colony which has been established. These three sites are selected for discussion since all have been excavated or re-excavated within the last fifteen years. Finally, a concluding section briefly considers the evidence from the site of Kastri on Kythera, and summarises the conclusions reached.

Excavation in 1988 demonstrated the systematic organisation of the settlement in every phase. Regular blocks of buildings, separated by parallel streets, existed throughout the history of the settlement from the fourteenth to the ninth century BC. The continuity of occupation from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age is beyond doubt. The discovery of two more crop storerooms in the earliest level (Phase 9) adds to the unique evidence for centralised agricultural storage at Assiros at the period when Mycenaean palaces flourished in Southern Greece.

Klithi is a rockshelter in the lower reaches of the Voidomatis gorge, near the village of Klithonia in Epirus. Excavations in progress since 1983 have revealed evidence of a late Upper Palaeolithic occupation dated between 16,000 BP and 10,000 BP, with rich microlithic stone tool industries and faunal assemblages dominated by chamois and ibex. The excavations have been accompanied by wider investigations of the local and regional palaeoenvironment and reexamination of the Middle and Upper Palaeolithic sites excavated by Eric Higgs in the 1960s, notably Kokkinopilos, Asprochaliko, and Kastritsa. This paper presents some of the detailed results of the Klithi excavations and sets the results within the wider context of the global issues which inform the study of Palaeolithic archaeology, the Palaeolithic of Greece as a whole, and the regional picture of Palaeolithic settlement in Epirus.

This article is concerned with the recognition and dating of Holocene relative sea-level changes along the coast of west Crete (an island located in the active Hellenic subduction arc of the southern Aegean) and in particular in Sphakia. Radiocarbon data for changes in sea levels collected and analysed previously must (a) be recorrected to take into account isotopic fractionation, and (b) recalibrated by using the new marine reservoir value. These new radiocarbon dates are analysed using Bayesian statistics. The resulting calendar dates for changes in sea level are younger than previously assumed. In particular the Great Uplift in western Crete in late antiquity must be dated to the fifth or sixth century AD, not to AD 365. Moreover, recent work on tectonics suggests that the Great Uplift need not have been accompanied by a catastrophic earthquake. Finally, we consider the consequences of the Great Uplift for some coastal sites in Sphakia.

Strontium isotope ratio (87Sr/86Sr) analysis was applied to dental enamel samples from eleven adults from Grave Circle A at Mycenae in order to investigate their local versus non-local geographical origin. The results of this analysis suggest a relatively high intra-sample variation in 87Sr/86Sr values for the Grave Circle A Mycenaeans. Based on these results, only two individuals may be identified as locals at Mycenae. Of the other nine individuals, three may be identified as non-locals at this site. Because two of these are the only females from Grave Circle A tested for 87Sr/86Sr it is tentatively suggested that this finding may reflect marital patterns and the non-local origin of the females associated with high social ranking at Mycenae. However, owing to the paucity of data on the biologically available strontium at sites in the Aegean, it cannot be established with certainty whether the individuals identified as non-locals originated a few dozen or hundreds of kilometres away from Mycenae. Finally, conclusions on the local versus non-local origin of the remaining six individuals are tentative. Their ratios may equally to a non-local origin reflect a variegated diet that comprised ‘non-local’ amongst ‘local’ foodstuffs, which would not be unexpected for a Mycenaean palace economy of the ‘redistributive’ type.

Η ανάλυση της ισοτοπικής αναλογίας του στροντίου (87Sr/86Sr) εφαρμόστηκε σε δείγματα οδοντικού σμάλτου από έντεκα ενήλικες από τον Ταφικό Κύκλο Α στις Μυκήνες προκειμένου να διερευνυθεί η τοπική ή μη-τοπική γεωγραφική τους προέλευση. Σύμφωνα με τα απολέσματα των αναλύσεων παρατηρείται υψηλή ενδο-πληθυσμνακή ποικιλότητα σε 87Sr/86Sr τιμές για τους Μυκηναίους από τον Ταφικό Κύκλο Α. Μόνο δύο από τα εξεταστένθα άτομα ταυτοποιήθηκαν ως αυτόχθονες στις Μυκήνες. Από τα υπόλοιπα εννέα, τρία άτομα χαρακτηρίστηκαν επήλυδες. Επειδή τα δύο από τα τρία αυτά άτομα είναι οι μόνες γυναίκες από τον Ταφικό Κύκλο Α, στις οποίες έγινε δειγματοληψία για την ανάλυση της ισοτοπικής αναλογίας του στροντίου, με επιφύλαξη προτείνεται ότι τα απολέσματα που παρουσιάζονται εδώ είναι πιθανό να αντικατοπτρίζουν γαμήλιες πρακτικές και τη μη-τοπική προέλευση των γυναικών από τα ανώτερα κοννωνικά στρώματα στις Μυκήνες. Ωστόσο, λόγω του εξαιρετικά μνκρού αριθμού δεδομένων για το βιολογικά διαθέσιμο στρόντιο σε θέσεις του Αιγαιακού χώρου, δεν είναι δυνατό να καθοριστεί με βεβαιότητα ο τόπος προέλευσής τους, ο οποίος μπορεί να απέχει μερικές δεκάδες ή εκατοντάδες χιλιόμετρα απο τις Μυκήνες. Τέλος, λιγότερο σαφή είναι τα συμπεράσματα για την προέλευση των υπόλοιπων έξι εξεταστέντων ατόμων. Οι τιμές 87Sr/86Sr είναι δυνατόν σε συνδυασμό με μια μη-τοπική καταγωγή των εν λόγω ατόμων να αντικατοπτρίζουν ποικιλία ‘τοπικών’ και ‘μη-τοπικών’ τροφών στη δίαιτά τους. Το συμπέρασμα αυτό δε μας ξαφνιάζει σε μια οικονομία του ‘αναδιανεμητικού’ τύπου, στον οποίο υποστηρίζεται πως ανήκει η Μυκηναϊκή οικονομία της ανακτορικής εποχής.

The study of Greek pottery of the Archaic period has reached the point at which most groups can be identified on stylistic grounds alone and confidently assigned to their place of manufacture, while in some groups works of individual studios, painters, and potters can be detected. There remain, however, both many problem pieces whose origin is disputed or unknown, and some major classes about which, for example, it is still possible to argue whether they were made in Italy or Greece. This is a field in which the techniques of clay analysis might prove beneficent, and this article presents the provisional results of the first of a series of tests designed to explore this potential.

Previous study of the relationship between provenance and composition in the Late Bronze Age painted pottery of Minoan Crete and Mycenaean Greece has shown that it is possible to distinguish a number of different types of composition which have a clearly defined territorial significance. One type of composition has been found to be characteristic of sites in the Peloponnese, two others to be almost wholly confined to north Greece, yet another to be distinctive of central Crete, and so forth. This stage of the original investigation, in fact, defined the different composition patterns which could be associated with the producing centres in the Minoan and Mycenaean homelands. But much Minoan and an even greater quantity of Mycenaean pottery has been recovered from regions far removed from these production centres. Such finds have been recorded from South Italy and Sicily, from the Ionian coast of Asia Minor, in Cyprus, Syria and Palestine, and in Egypt. A second phase of the original investigation therefore concentrated on this material. It was found, for instance, that Mycenaean pottery found in North Syria at Tell Atchana, and in Egypt at Tell el Amarna, was indistinguishable from the composition pattern (Group A) of the Mycenaean pottery from sites in the Peloponnese. This congruence was interpreted to mean that such pottery had been made in the Peloponnese and that it had travelled to Syria and to Egypt in the course of trade.

Many previous studies of early Lesbos have tended to emphasize the famous historical figures—Alkaios, Sappho, and Pittakos—and the events surrounding them that are known from literary sources; there has been much less discussion of archaeology, and this has led to a one-dimensional picture. The sources have tended to encourage an emphasis on features of the island's archaic history which are traditionally thought of as ‘Greek’, and the true context of early civilization in the island, which had strong links to Anatolia and the east, has largely been ignored. This paper corrects the imbalance, acknowledging more fully the eastern links in the island's culture from the Bronze Age to the Archaic period and indicating that during this period Lesbos was as much an extension of Anatolia as a ‘Greek’ island.

Chemical analysis by ICP at the Fitch Laboratory (British School at Athens) is used to see if the imported LB II pottery at Phylakopi on Melos is Minoan or Mycenaean. The possibility of a Minoan thalassocracy and of Minoan colonies in the Cyclades is reconsidered in the light of this new evidence, trade routes to the Cyclades are examined, the nature of the Mycenaean presence in the Cyclades is briefly discussed and the evidence for a LM I B horizon at Kastri on Kythera reinvestigated.

The present ‘transhumance versus agro-pastoralism’ debate is here set within the context of a broadly based anthropological approach to pastoralism. Certain constant features of the relationship of pastoralists to their landscape are identifiable, although many aspects of pastoral strategies are variable over time and space and across socio-economic groups. The control of much of the pastoral exploitation of the landscape in antiquity by wealthy estate owners is one important difference from the present day. The resulting observations are applied to the archaeological record of isolated rural sites now widely known from surface survey projects. It is argued that the tendency to assume that pastoralists are archaeologically invisible has meant that these very visible sites have been ignored as possible pastoral bases. The location of a number of these sites suggests that pastoralism was a major element in the activities focused on them in antiquity.

This paper presents the results of a project designed to investigate the techniques used to make late bronze age Aegean stirrup-jars and to determine whether the identified techniques were influenced by regional-cultural factors. The project was initiated by the need to address the question of whether 12th-cent. BC stirrup-jars from Tell es-Sa'idiyeh in the Jordan valley, apparently of local clay, were made by local potters or by immigrant Mycenaeans. The stirrup-jars studied comprised examples from Tell es-Sa'idiyeh, Gezer, the Greek mainland, Aegina, Rhodes, Cyprus, Caria, and Egypt. Xeroradiography was used to elucidate variations in construction techniques, and the findings were tested by practical experimentation. The observations indicate that there is a degree of linkage between the techniques of manufacture and cultural background. In order to make the discussion of production techniques more secure, neutron activation analyses were also carried out; these provided information on the place of manufacture as opposed to the find-spot, and have also thrown some interesting light on patterns of trade in the Mediterranean area towards the end of the Late Bronze Age.

Diachronic analyses of pastoralism over the millennia pose a problem. Studies of one period can use models based on other periods as heuristic devices, to pose problems and questions for investigation. But survey archaeologists and others engaged in diachronic analysis cannot assume a period-specific model as a starting point. Instead, we propose that investigation begin from a set of seven variables, which constitute the elements for the formulation of comparative analyses: environment, location, scale, specialization, links with agriculture, gender/division of labour, and cultural integration. The first five have been discussed before in the literature, but the last two have not previously been given sufficient attention, because of the old dominance of environmental and economic preoccupations.

The cave of Cyclope is situated on the SW side of the island of Youra, 16 miles from Alonnessos. Systematic research in the cave lasted from 1992 to 1996. The upper layers, which date to the Roman period, contained mainly lamps. In the centre of the cave a Middle Neolithic stratum yielded a mass of pottery of exceptional red-on-white decoration. In cutting C, near the entrance, the upper layers belonged to Late Neolithic I (5th millennium BC) and were underlain by a thin Early and Middle Neolithic layer. Most of the deposits were Mesolithic. These layers consisted of faunal remains and thick-packed living floors in which there were ash hearths and scattered charcoal. Radiocarbon dates from these strata ranged from c. 6800 to 8500 BC. The quantity of fish bones and shells was immense in the Mesolithic levels, suggesting, in association with the variety of bone hooks, high dependance on sea resources. The presence of Mesolithic habitation on a small island in the northern Aegean demonstrates that the cave of Cyclope is the earliest site in the Aegean Sea.

Many clays and stones contain particles of magnetic oxides of iron. These particles, if heated above their Curie points, which range up to 670° C., lose whatever magnetism they have; and when they cool back through their Curie points, they acquire a new ‘thermoremanent’ magnetization under the influence of the surrounding magnetic field, which generally is the magnetic field of the earth. That field is changing continuously, both in direction and intensity, and the course of its secular change is not yet understood; the change is compound, one factor being the main field, which may be fairly stationary over long periods, and the other being the numerous minor regional fields, which move and alter relatively quickly and largely determine the local variations in the magnetic field. So it is dangerous to extrapolate values for local variations either for more than a century or two in time or for more than five to ten degrees in space. At present the best hope for discovering past changes in the earth's field is from the thermoremanent magnetization of burnt clays and stones, where the date of the burning is reasonably closely fixed from other evidence. Such knowledge is obviously of interest to geophysicists, but for periods and places where the past course of the earth's field has been ascertained, archaeomagnetism—that is the study of the thermoremanent magnetization of archaeological remains—can help archaeologists too. It should be evident on reflection that if an archaeomagnetic specimen is to be useful certain requirements are necessary. First, the locality where it was magnetized must be known. Secondly, for the study of direction, the sample's orientation at the time when it was magnetized must be recorded, so that the inclination [or dip] and declination [or compass bearing] of its own thermoremanent magnetism can be related to the horizontal and to true North respectively.

Mr. R. W. Hutchinson excavated the Geometric tombs at Khaniale Tekke near Knossos in 1940. He published an account of the excavation and the material from the reused tholos (Tomb 2) in BSA xlix (1954) 215 ff. The publication in this article will often be cited below, by italicized references only. He described the finds from a chamber tomb (Tomb 1; to the right in p. 215, fig. 1). The finds from a third tomb, north of the tholos and mentioned on pp. 223 ƒ., were not available for study at that time, but were later identified, part in a storeroom at Knossos, part in Heraklion Museum, and Mr. Hutchinson kindly invited me to prepare the publication of them. Since 1954 the full publication of the Fortetsa cemetery has appeared, as well as other studies of relevant finds in the Knossos area. These prompt a reconsideration of the finds already published, especially the important gold jewellery. I have taken this opportunity to review the evidence with some supplementary photographs. St. Alexiou, Ephor of Antiquities, has kindly allowed me to study again the finds displayed in Heraklion Museum.

The contents of Tomb 1 were listed briefly on pp. 215 ƒ. They cannot now certainly be identified, but some of the pottery may have become confused with that from Tomb 3, published below. The dromos of the tholos, Tomb 2, was cut across by later burials. From one are reported an amphora (p. 224, no.23) and a lekythos of Cypriot form (possibly one of those published, pl. 26 top). Another held a wine amphora and a white-ground lekythos—fifth-century. And a third contained a pedestalled cothon with lid (no. 94). The last is in Heraklion, and is a plain plemochoe on a high flaring base.

The technique of Graph Theory is described and applied to the ancient road system of the Peloponnese, using the network described in the Peutinger Table, and compared with George Gennadius' map of 1822. The result demonstrates the relative importance of centres in the Peloponnese during the Roman period, and the modification to the pattern of road usage resulting from sea communications. Details of a computer programme for the necessary calculations are given in an appendix.

This article concludes the account of our joint researches in Caria. In ‘The Cnidia’ (BSA xlvii (1952) 171–212) we treated of the Cnidian Peninsula, and in ‘The Halicarnassus Peninsula’ (BSA 1 (1955) 85–171) of the other salient peninsula of the west Carian coast. Caunus with its environs has been treated by Bean in ‘Notes and Inscriptions from Caunus’ (JHS lxxiii (1953) 10–35, lxxiv (1954) 85–110), and the mainland territory of Rhodes in southern Caria in Fraser and Bean, The Rhodian Peraea and Islands (1954). In the present article we attempt to cover the parts of the west Carian coast not previously treated in our two joint articles, together with the islands adjacent to that coast. In the south we have retrodden some of the ground covered in Rhodian Peraea, especially around and inland from the inner part of the Ceramic Gulf; and in the north we have carried our joint researches into Ionia as far as Teichiussa on the mainland and Leros and Lepsia in the Icarian Sea. We also include some observations on the Cnidian and Halicarnassian peninsulas, supplementing our previous work. In conclusion we discuss briefly the distribution of west Carian dynasties in classical times; and extending our previous observations on Mausolus' remodelling of the habitational network of west Caria, we have tried to give a fuller account of the scope of Hecatomnid enterprise in this direction.

This paper details the characterisation of four obsidian artefacts from the Mesolithic site of Livari Skiadi, one of only a handful of such pre-Neolithic sites on Crete. Elemental analysis using EDXRF sources the raw materials to Sta Nychia on Melos; in concert with other data, it can be suggested that this was the preferred Melian source for Late Pleistocene – Early Holocene populations. The Livari material represents the earliest Melian obsidian on Crete and by implication the first evidence of its inhabitants' connections to the Cycladic islands. When located within a broader review of Melian obsidian use in the Upper Palaeolithic – Mesolithic Aegean, it can be shown that the main consumers of these raw materials were island-based groups with immediate access to waterways that led to the Cyclades. It is suggested that distinctions between island and mainland toolkits (technical and raw material choices) may have been the product of seasonal, and environmental influences, rather than reflecting the products of different populations. Finally, certain datasets, including Livari, suggest the procurement of obsidian via intermediaries. These exchanges are viewed in avowedly social terms, with gift-giving a fundamental manner through which inter-group relations were created and maintained, whereby the circulation of obsidian can be viewed as one of those mechanisms through which Mesolithic Aegean cultural traditions came to be produced and reproduced.

On Professor Wace's invitation I joined his staff on the Mycenae excavation in 1950 in order to undertake the testing of an area where Geometric pottery had been picked up in ploughland by the Mycenaean Causeway a kilometre S.S.W. of the acropolis. The soundings here reported were carried out in the first ten days of August at the place called Ayios Ioannis on the left bank of the Chaos watercourse, in a field which extends some sixty metres up from the causeway. On his plan of Mycenae Steffen marked considerable traces of ‘Cyclopean’ buildings a short distance back from the stream bank, but these are no longer to be seen.

The first probe was made at a distance of about seven metres to the east of the abutment of the Mycenaean Causeway on the south bank. A very rough terrace wall or substructure on an alignment north-east by north was found at plough level and exposed for a length of four metres; it has a loose stone backing something over a metre thick and is preserved to a height of 80 cm. on the face. The wall is bedded in gravel, and being at the presumed level of the top of the causeway may have had some connection with the network of roads that radiated from it; below plough level a little plain L.H. III pottery was found.