We must bear in mind two fundamental facts, which are basic to the theme of this paper: first, that Egypt more than any other land has influenced the Minoan-Mycenaean civilisation, and second, that the free adaptation and fusion of Egyptian motives is a typical phenomenon of Aegean art and mentality.

Something has already been written about Egyptian influence in the art of the Shaft Graves of Mycenae. I hope to show, in a forthcoming paper, that this connection is even greater, extending its influence not only in art (in just that point the influence is not great), but also and especially in material matters and in deep religious and funerary ideas. Here we will discuss a very well known and ‘curious’ object of early Mycenaean art, the gold and silver pin from the Third Shaft Grave (Fig. 1).

In the last volume of the Annual a report was given on the work done at Haliartos in 1926. It was not possible at that time to publish the excavation exhaustively as the finds had not been thoroughly examined, but I have recently made a further study of them, and have prepared this supplementary paper to bring the publication up to date. The finds are here catalogued and discussed under their several sections, and the conclusions derived from them are set out in the summary at the end.

Professor Doerpfeld in the Athenische Mittheilungen, xxx. pp. 257–97, has put forward a theory regarding the relation of the later to the earlier palaces at Knossos and at Phaestos, which requires serious consideration, not only in view of Doerpfeld's high authority in such matters, but also in the light of the results of excavation, as these have been accumulating from season to season at different sites in Crete.

It will clear the ground considerably if, as a common starting-point of argument, it is agreed at the very beginning that the question at issue is primarily one of stratification, and that all understanding of sequence in development is ultimately conditioned by our apprehension of the character of the sequence in the stratification, in so far as that has been brought to light by actual excavation.

During the course of travel and exploration that we have carried out during the last three years in Thessaly, and South Macedonia, Mr. M. S. Thompson and myself have discovered that in these regions a carnival play similar to that seen by Mr. Dawkins in Thrace is still performed on certain occasions. It is surprising that these festivals have for so long escaped the notice of travellers, for the area in which they occur is a large one, and they were more extensively celebrated in days gone by. Mr. G. F. Abbott seems to be the only traveller who has noticed them, and even he has misunderstood them.

Early Cycladic pottery from the lower levels of the site at Akrotiri, especially from the pits dug to bedrock to support the modern roofing, is described and discussed. This demonstrates that Akrotiri was occupied as early as the EC period. Evidence from this for relations with the rest of the Cyclades and the Aegean in general is discussed, together with the possible chronological equations. Most of the pottery belongs to the advanced phases of the Early Cycladic. There is, as yet, no certain evidence for Neolithic.

The Knives. Three complete one-edged knives, and one fragmentary, were found in the tombs. The bronze knive (I. 5) belongs to a small group in which the whole of the handle including a T-shaped pommel extension was cast in one piece with the blade, while inset panels of perishable material were secured by rivets and deep flanges in the metal. Apart from this pommel-flange it is similar to a large contemporary group of bronze knives to be found throughout the Aegean.

One-edged knives with flanged handles are at least as old as the Shaft-grave period at Mycenae. In Crete a riveted handle without flanges was preferred from Middle Minoan times, but the flanged handle appears at the end of Late Minoan II or the beginning of IIIA. The pommel-flange is rare, though found occasionally on both riveted and unriveted knives. The earliest dated example is probably that from the Palace of Mycenae found with other objects of Late Helladic II or early III date; one comes from Dendra, Chamber Tomb 7, and one unriveted from Chamber Tomb 2, dated L.H. IIIB. The Mycenae knife has not the true T-projection but only a broadening at the end of the handle which is in shape very like handles of Levantine daggers and two-edged knives found in the so-called ‘Hyksos tombs’ of Ras Shamra and at Tell el Ajjul, Tell Fara, and elsewhere in Palestine.

Although the slopes of the καστρί had been rifled by native diggers there were indications on the southern side, at a site called Τὰ ῾Ελληνικά that something still remained. The trial pits struck at once two small burial-enclosures, lying close together. The northern of the two proved to be a structure some six by seven metres, with the western wall lacking, divided into two unequal compartments.

Whereas the 1954 tombs belonged to the House of Shields, of the two uncovered in 1955 one was within the House of Sphinxes and the other lay immediately to the west of it.

This burial does not need any lengthy description. It was found at the east end of an otherwise unfruitful trial trench dug immediately to the west of the modern road which runs along the western side of the House of Sphinxes. It consisted of the skeleton (in very poor condition) of a small child, placed on the rock. Two bronze pins lay together over the chest, and a cup was found on the rock beside the body. There was no longer any indication as to how the skeleton and the associated objects were originally protected.

This shell applique in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford was acquired by Evans in Crete in 1894. He was told that it came from the Mesara, but there is no evidence to link it with the Ayios Onoufrios deposit. The material is Aegean Spondylus gaederopus L., not Tridacna from the Red Sea. The plaque is probably Cretan work of the period of the Early Palaces (Middle Minoan I–II), not Early Minoan or Archaic Greek as Evans at different times believed. It seems to represent, not a negro or ‘negroid’ as often claimed, but a physical type attested by other representations of Bronze Age date in Crete and elsewhere in the Aegean area.

Perhaps the most popular vase shape in Euboea in the fourth century was the lidded lekanis. A number of specimens, decorated with floral motives on the lid and simple leaves or linear patterns on the receptacles, may be seen in BSA lv, pls. 54–57 passim. They show considerable variety in the shape of the knobs and in the treatment of the handles, but the receptacles remain fundamentally the same. Akin to these are little bowls of similar shape, lidded, but without handles. Such are the vases of a kernos of unknown provenience in Athens with a vaguely anthropomorphic central handle consisting of a long loop surmounted by a moulded head and with small arm-like projections recalling those of a herm (Plate 1, 1). The lids of three of the four little vases are preserved, the two nearest the handle having horizontal rims, while the two outer vases both had lids with rims turning vertically down, as is shown by the one extant lid and by the flanges on both the receptacles. The knobs of the two lids with horizontal rims are of a shape similar to the stemmed foot of a cup or dish; the surviving lid with down-turned rim has a ring like the footring of a stemless cup to serve as a knob. Each kind of knob, stemmed or stemless, functioned as a foot when the lid was set upside down on the table and became a dish. The low footring knobs were not unknown in Athens, but they were commoner in Euboea. One was noticed in BSA lv. 212, no. 8 on a lid, not figured, belonging to the Bonn group of floral black-figure, which is undoubtedly of Euboean, and very probably of Chalcidian manufacture. We shall see more of them later on.

Herodotos describes the straits to which Argos was reduced by the victory of Kleomenes I. in the following extravagant terms: ᾿´Αργος δὲἀνδρω̑ν ἐχηρώθη οὕτω ὥστε οἱ δου̑λοι αὐτω̑ν ἔσχον πάντα τὰ πρήγματα ἄρχοντές τε καὶ διέποντες, ἐς ὃ ἐπήβησαν οὶ τω̑ν ἀπολομένων παι̑δες· ἔπειτα σφέας οὗτοι ἀνακτώμενοι ὀπίσω ἐς ἑωυτοὺς τὸ Ἄργος ἐξέβαλον· ἐξωθεύμενοι δὲ οἱ δου̑λοι μάχῃ ἔσχον Τίρυνθα. τέως μὲν δή σφι ἦν ἄρθμια ἐς ἀλλήλους, ἔπειτα δὲ ἐς τοὺς δούλους ἦλθε ἀνὴρ μάντις, Κλέανδρος γένος ἐὼν Φιγαλεὺς ἀπ᾿ Ἀρκαδίης· οὗτος τοὺς δούλους ἀνέγνωσε ἐπιθέσθαι τοι̑σι δεσπότῃσι. ἐκ τούτον δὴ πόλεμός σφι ἦν ἐπὶ χρόνον,ἐς ὃ δὴ μόγις οἱ᾿Αργεῖοι ἐπεκράτησαν Herodotos is given to exaggerating catastrophes. Mr. Wells has drawn attention to the fact that in 491 B.c. Argos was sufficiently populous to allow 1000 volunteers to take part in the war in Aigina. This extremity of ὀλιγανδρία which the historian depicts, must be a fiction. Even in antiquity the attention of critics was drawn to the passage.

This article originated from a suggestion by Dr. Chadwick, that it would be useful to those studying the Linear B archives from Knossos to have a list of sites which archaeologists believe to have been occupied at the time of the destruction of the Palace in whose ruins the tablets were found.

An opportunity to follow up this suggestion came when the author was invited to contribute to a volume of studies in honour of Professor Doro Levi. Unfortunately the study was not finished in time, but it remains, as intended, a small offering to a senior Italian colleague.

Two vases reputedly from the village of Vrondama, located some 7km. SW of Geraki in Central Laconia, add significantly to the corpus of Laconian Dark Age pottery, since they represent both ends of the chronological spectrum. The vases are an askos and oinochoe. The askos can be dated to the very early Dark Ages, perhaps even to the transition from LH IIIC to DA, and does much to narrow the gap in Laconia between the end of IIIC and the beginning of DA. The oinochoe, on the other hand, may serve as a transition between the end of DA and the beginning of Laconian LG, for parallels, primarily from Argos, provide a general chronological framework of MG II. The oinochoe is, therefore, as important a transtitional piece for the end of Laconian DA as the askos is for the beginning.

The temptation to probe the origins of a people who brought war and destruction with them, but whose absorption was followed by the great renaissance of Greece is infectious. Philologists have not regarded the warning of Beloch who twenty years ago wrote ‘Gewiss werden Wanderungen auf der griechischen Halbinsel in vorhistorishcher Zeit stattgefunden haben; aber wir wissen dariiber nichts, absolut gar nichts, und wer es anders sagt, der tauscht sich selbst und sein Publikum’ and now the anthropologist is emboldened to try. Much water has flowed under the bridge since 1890, and I make the plunge. I take leave to change the question from the usual formula, ‘Who were the Dorians?’ to ‘Who are the Dorians?’ The attempt is made from the point of view of physical anthropology, in the hope that it may prove a contribution; for the aid of archaeology and philology is obviously needed in the solution of such an involved question.

The Byzantine coinage in the twelfth century was of three kinds. There were gold nomismata, with a purchasing power which must have been a good deal greater than that of a present-day five-pound note, and also nomismata of ‘pale gold’—gold alloyed with silver—of lower value; at the other extreme there were bronze coins, smaller than a modern farthing, which were the coinage of the market-place; intermediate, but still of low value, there were coins about the size of a halfpenny, normally made of copper lightly washed with silver. The silvered bronze and the gold were not flat, as are most coins, but saucer-shaped. The reason for their unusual form is not known. Numismatists describe them as scyphate, and refer to the middle denomination in the later Byzantine system of coinage as Scyphate Bronze, to distinguish it from the petty bronze coinage. Scyphate Bronze was first struck under Alexius I (1081–1118). Substantive issues were made by John II (1118–43), and such coinage became extremely plentiful under Manuel I (1143–80) and his successors Isaac II (1185–95) and Alexius III (1195–1203). After the capture of Constantinople in the course of the Fourth Crusade, the successor-states to the Byzantine Empire at Nicaea, Salonica, and in Epirus continued to issue scyphate bronze coinage, although in much smaller quantities, until after the middle of the thirteenth century.

A fragment of an archaic temple model from the British School's early excavations at the sanctuary of Artemis Orthia at Sparta is published. It is suggested here that its decoration represents a timber-framed building. Support for this argument is found in the similar construction technique used for the early 7th-cent. temple of Artemis Orthia. Its contribution to the debate concerning the evolution of the developed Doric order is considered. In further discussion of the significance of votive ‘house models’, doubts are expressed about the universal applicability of recent explanations linking them with female cults explicitly associated with protection of the household.

A small group of note-books containing memoranda, itineraries, copies of inscriptions, and miscellaneous sketches by Sir William Gell was recently acquired by the British School at Athens, and it has seemed worth while to publish the following brief account of their contents, together with a rather fuller description of the two most important features which they present. These are (1) the copies which Gell made of numerous inscriptions, and (2) his own brief diary for the first part of his mission to Asia Minor on behalf of the Dilettanti Society in 1812—13.

The completion of work on this block consisted almost entirely or examining lower strata in the northern and eastern quarters. Whilst in one part of the block (26 on Plates XII. and XIII.) the rocky subsoil rises so high as to have led to the total destruction of all remains, in the immediately adjacent regions to the north and east it sinks so low as to leave some three or four metres of deposit with four clearly separate strata of walls. Plate XII. gives a plan shewing the two earlier sets, Middle Minoan and, above this, but on different lines, Late Minoan I., and Plate XIII.

In discussing the so-called Alexandrian Grotesques in a paper in this Annual last year I expressed the opinion that they should be assigned to Campanian art. I have, however, since then been enabled to study these grotesques more closely; and have in consequence been led to modify my former opinion very considerably. Though these grotesques were very popular in Italy during the late republican and the imperial periods, they were by no means peculiar to the west. They fall naturally into several classes, which, for convenience, are here given in tabular form.