The publication of Sheila Adam's lively and closely argued study of the technique of Greek sculpture has aroused considerable controversy; not the least disputed of her views was that the running drill, ‘the only major technical change which occurs in Greek sculpture of the Classical Period’, was not introduced until the second quarter of the fourth century B.C., a full seventy years or more after Blümel's date for its invention. Although such examination as I have been able to make of extant Greek originals from this period suggests to me that Adam was correct in concluding that the tool was not in general use until after c. 370, there does seem to be some evidence that sculptors were experimenting with it for about twenty to thirty years beforehand.

1. Edessa. This inscription is still where Leake first reported it, in the courtyard of the Metropolitan Church, the Dormition of the Virgin, built into the south end of the west wall of the Γραφεῖον of the Δεσπότης. Although it has been published half a dozen times, the text has never been read correctly in its entirety, largely because its height from the ground makes the taking of a photograph or the making of a squeeze, let alone a study of the letters, very difficult. I was fortunate to be able to examine it in situ, and the accompanying photograph of a squeeze will facilitate the establishment of the text (Plate 5).

It is a rough block, c. 0·46 m. in height and 0·50 m. in width, with a moulding all round, the first line being engraved on the upper moulding. The letters are irregular, measuring on an average 0·025 m. in ll. 1–6 and 0·01 m. in ll. 7–18. The letter-forms, especially important in a dated inscription, are noteworthy. Alpha, delta, and lambda have short tails on the apex; in ll. 1–6 epsilon is square, in ll. 7–18 lunar; similarly in ll. 1–6 sigma is square, in ll. 7–18 lunar. The forms of mu and omega are to be noted; see the accompanying photograph. There are no ligatures.

The probable extent of the Late Cycladic town at Akrotiri is discussed, and the original geographical setting reconstructed. The principles on which the town and its buildings were constructed are elucidated; emphasizing the compact accumulation of rooms and other units of space. Buildings are generally multi-storied, and there is no evidence for courtyards or light walls within them. Access is generally limited to a single entrance, lighting and ventilation are provided by windows. Drainage systems are provided. The three types of streets: main streets, narrow alleys, and blind alleys are described, and the factors behind their arrangement and form discussed. Orientation of the streets is approximately north to south and east to west. The phenomenon of dentation in the construction of walls is discussed. The conclusion is that the town plan reflects a building operation based on a well-organized community with strong traditions and unwritten laws.

Amari is the district of Crete which lies south-west of Mount Ida. It is a hill-district, consisting mainly of the slopes of Ida and Kedros, which with its craggy sides and hundred springs is no unworthy rival to Ida. Between the two mountains lies the valley of the river Platys. Amari forms an eparchy, with thirty-nine villages, but no large centre of population. The villagers, farmers and shepherds, are an old-fashioned folk; they still maintain many of their traditional customs, dispense an open-handed hospitality, and have more than their share of the war-like virtues of the Cretans.

In the summer of 1972, while participating in the excavation of the Royal Road South at Knossos under the direction of Professor Peter Warren now at Bristol University, I undertook a limited examination of certain boxes in the Stratigraphical Museum in the reasonable hope of supplementing John Betts's earlier discovery of five sealstones and sixty-six sealings that could be related to the Palace. The boxes I examined all carry the label of ‘Evans's Personal Property’, and contain an extraordinary number of faience, clay, and stone objects, all with provenance unknown, but many, if not all, surely from Evans's own excavations. The box containing the seals was marked ‘Box 1878, Evans's Material’.

A series of inscriptions, most of which are unfortunately in a very fragmentary condition, records the victories won by teams of Spartan ballplayers. As two of these have not yet been published while the others have never been grouped together, my present object is to collect the texts in question, restoring them as far as possible, and to add a short statement of the main facts which we can gather from them regarding the contest referred to.

This report describes the excavation of two pits which had been dug into the natural rock, apparently in connection with the storage and perhaps original manufacture of plaster, in the space named after them the ‘Room of the Plaster Pits’. The pits were filled and covered in LM II, and the evidence for their date helps to bring the history of this part of the palace into clearer focus. The Room of the Plaster Pits may be the same as the elusive Lapidary's Workshop described by Evans in his Knossos report for 1901. It is suggested that the lack of observed floors or blocking walls in doorways separating deposits in this area makes it difficult to divide the vases assigned to LM III B here from tablets and seal impressions involved in the final destruction of the palace.

This article is a continuation of that published in BSA lvii. 46–74, and the same principles have been followed in editing the present series of fragments. The three sections deal with the tablets found during excavations at Knossos in 1961, two small fragments preserved in the British Museum but hitherto unrecorded, and a collection of pieces in Iraklion which had previously been overlooked or thought unworthy of publication. The new numbers assigned run from 8210 to 8332.

The system of transcription has been slightly modified to conform to the latest version of the ‘Wingspread Convention’ dated 1962 and published by Professor E. L. Bennett as a supplement to Nestor. The use of hyphens between groups of letters representing Mycenaean signs has been continued, as allowing in some cases a more accurate account to be given of the state of the text. The expansions of the abbreviated names of the ideograms will be found in the index of ideographic signs on p. 88. The comma has been used as the transcription of the word-divider, as it seems inadequate, especially in fragmentary texts, to leave it to be inferred merely from the spacing.

Unstratified finds from prehistoric sites are not without value, provided that something is known of their place of origin. Lacking a pedigree, they still have, as it were, a passport; and any of them that belongs to a civilisation inadequately represented in this country deserves a welcome. I have, therefore, taken this opportunity of introducing a group of early West Anatolian vases which has for many years been in the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge; the moment is appropriate, for, had they been published sooner, when their home was more unfamiliar to us than it is now, they would have been less informing; while to delay their presentation might involve their eclipse by rivals with fuller credentials.

The control groups used in the earlier analysis (BSA 75 (1980) 151–61) have been enlarged. The range of suspected imports was extended with samples from Cyprus and Crete. It is concluded, as a result, that the majority of exports did originate in Euboea, though it is not possible to distinguish between kilns at Lefkandi, Chalkis, and Eretria. No conclusions were possible in the case of six sherds from Knossos. The results demonstrate early Euboean maritime enterprise.

Among the most interesting discoveries of the post-war years in Attica are a Late Geometric amphora and an impressed gold head-band; they are reported to have been found, the band inside the amphora, near Koropi in the Mesogaia, and were acquired together by Mrs. Helen Stathatou, who has graciously consented to my making them more widely known in this tribute to the master of Greek archaeology for whom both she and I have so high a regard. Each is a first-rate piece in itself, and the discovery of the two in one burial gives an added interest to the pair.

In the 1850s Captain T. A. B. Spratt, subsequently to become Admiral and Director of the Mediterranean Survey, was engaged on the charting of the Aegean. This work was interrupted by the Crimean War and later resumed. Captain Spratt had under his command the paddle frigate Spitfire and the tender Auxiliar, from which he necessarily made journeys ashore in Crete in order to complete the triangulation of the Aegean from the mountain summits to the adjacent islands. On these journeys he took a keen interest in the location of Classical sites. In this respect he followed some thirty years after Robert Pashley whose pioneering work Spratt is reported to have been able occasionally to supplement or correct.

In November and December 1906 I travelled in the south of Italy in order to examine Messapian inscriptions. These inscriptions, believed by Mommsen to belong to the first and second centuries B.C., have been rather neglected of late, but rumours of forgeries, accepted and published with too little criticism, made some investigation desirable. Ten years ago Sig. Bartolomeo Nogara ascertained the number of these inscriptions then known to exist, but without, I think, any detailed criticism of them. I followed in his footsteps, and my enquiries, which were directed to everyone likely to be interested in such matters, covered the whole ground, so that I believe that I saw all still extant. Of course other inscriptions, of which nothing has yet been heard, may have been found lately in country places, but my time, unfortunately, was too limited to allow of my searching through every village in that crowded district, though I was fortunate enough to light on some as yet unpublished, and not widely known.

With the idea of drawing attention to the fact that the whole of Crete including the most westerly parts had been occupied during every phase of the Minoan Bronze Age, if not earlier in Neolithic times, I recently listed sites of those periods known to me or reported by others in the province of Khania. Between 27 and 30 April 1966, my wife and I visited two areas on the south-west coast of the island (Fig. 1) where no Bronze Age sites appear to have been noted. These were (A) west of Palaiokhora (Fig. 2), and (B) between Sfakia and Frangokastelli (Fig. 3). Two small Minoan settlements were identified near the sea in area (A), and scattered traces of Minoan occupation in (B). The pottery seemed to reflect occupation during the flourishing period of the Minoan civilization between Middle Minoan I and Late Minoan I rather than earlier or later. The most westerly site visited (A. 7) might yield to excavation an interesting picture of what a small Minoan settlement in a remote area was like. In addition to the Minoan, a number of later, Greek and Roman, sites were observed. The most important of the Roman sites is B. 7 in the middle of the plain by Frangokastelli with substantial remains of an early Christian basilica church.

This report presents the results of excavations in 1993 in the area of the Early Houses and Early Paving by the South Front of the palace at Knossos. It adds to and further clarifies the results of earlier excavations in this area, and provides much-needed new evidence for the history of the Prepalatial and Protopalatial settlements. Principal findings of the 1993 investigation include (1) an EM II B pit deposit, which has important implications for our understanding of this ceramic phase at Knossos; (2) no fewer than three building phases in EM III, comprising the Early Houses including the substantial South Front House; and (3) the dating of the Early Paving and associated structures to MM I B.

A tour round the churches of Volissos, made with Mr. J. Boardman in 1961, revealed a number of unpublished inscriptions which I am setting out here together with two known texts which we were able to review. With one exception (no. 6) they are of Roman date; with two exceptions (nos. 4 and 6) repulsive to look at. Some of them are, however, quite substantial texts and the concentration of so many documents of this same period at Volissos may be significant.

First, thanks to two kindly critics, some modifications have to be made in my discussion of Attic neuter plural demes (BSA 1 (1955) 13). I should have quoted Steph. Byz. s.v. Στειριὰ . . . θηλυκῶς καὶ οὐδετὲρως to illustrate the possibility of doubt between feminine singular and neuter plural. Note that the form Στειριὰνδε given in Meineke's text is an emendation for the MS. Στειριὰδε This last is clearly wrong, but Στειριὰδε is at least as possible an emendation. The other two τοπικὰ, Στειριᾶθεν and Στειριοὶ point different ways. Since we do not know where Stephanus found them, nothing useful can be said.

Three vase-groups, largely drawn from material found in the Purification Trench on Rheneia and published in Délos 15 and 17, are discussed in this paper. The first belongs to the Late Geometric period while the other two are to be placed in the first half of the seventh century BC. All three may be linked in sequence and together illustrate a pottery tradition which is likely to be Parian. Evidence is presented linking the Attic Würzburg Group with a Cycladic artist here identified as the Ad Painter and located on Paros.

Evidence for the Ptolemaic occupation of the Cycladic island of Keos in the 3rd century B.C. is both contentious and exiguous. A recent archaeological surface survey of both the territory and the polis-centre of Koressos (Ptolemaic Arsinoe, apparently the principal Egyptian foothold on the island) invites a review of relevant historical and epigraphical evidence, old and new. Contrary to some opinion, all the available evidence implies that the later Hellenistic period was not a time of material prosperity for Koressos. It is suggested that its incorporation into the Ptolemaic empire may have contributed to its demise as a city-state, and to its eventual transformation into a minor adjunct of the neighbouring polis of Ioulis.

The allied forces landed at Salonika early in October 1915. For the first few months, which included the great retreat from Serbia, the military situation was too critical for much attention to be given to antiquities. But towards the end of the year the army of occupation settled down on its defensive lines in the neighbourhood of the town, which ran approximately from the river Galiko, near Naresh, to the sea at Stavros (PI. I.); and as trenches, gun emplacements, and dug-outs were constructed all along these lines, it soon became obvious that there were chances of interesting and valuable discoveries. In particular, the numerous mounds which are familiar to Macedonian archaeologists lent themselves readily to military purposes. I accordingly made a representation to Col. Cunliffe Owen, who was acting as Military Intelligence Officer, and a note was issued in General Orders about the end of December, ordering that all antiquities found should be reported to Headquarters, in order that they should, as soon as possible, be inspected, and, if necessary, taken over by me.