This paper is divided into three sections. In the first a group of pottery fragments from Chalcis serves as an introduction to a study of early Euboean pottery, and of its appearance and imitation in other parts of the Greek world. In the second some archaic and black-figured vases are published as addenda to my article on ‘Pottery from Eretria’ in BSA xlvii. 1–48, plates 1–14. This I refer to here simply as Eretria. Finally some historical considerations are prompted by the archaeological evidence reviewed. Briefly they involve the following theses: that Strabo's ‘Old Eretria’ may lie at or near Amarynthos at the distance from Eretria that Strabo indicated; that Euboeans played a major part in the foundation of Al Mina (Posideion) on the North Syrian coast in the early eighth century B.C.; that they may be largely responsible for the adoption of the Semitic alphabetic characters for the Greek language; and that Eretria was the ultimate victor in the ‘Lelantine War’.

Mme Semni Karouzou has with customary generosity granted me permission to publish several vases in the National Museum, Athens. Other pieces in the Louvre, the British Museum, and the Ashmolean Museum are illustrated by permission of the authorities of those museums. Mrs. A. D. Ure has been particularly helpful in the study of the black-figured vases and is herself preparing a study of a series closely related to the Euboean vases which are discussed here.

IG xii. 1. 695; T. Cam. 1. In the British Museum, from Kamiros. Early third century B.C.

Guarducci, Mem. dei Lincei vi. 8 (1938/9) 124, no. xxix bis; T. Cam. 2. Kamiros.

These lists present an organization at three levels:

(a) The smallest units are patrai, with names ending either -δαι or -ειοι, rather more of the latter than the former; the only exception is II 14 Ἀμφινεῖς.

(b) These are grouped under headings, Χυτριείων πάτραι (I 28, II 19), Βουκολείων πάτραι (III 18), &c. The general term for the bodies named Χυτρίειοι, &c., is not given.

(c) The heading Ἀλθαιμενίδος at I 19, II 11, embraces several of these second-level groups. At two removes above the patrai, Ἀλθαιμενίς must be a large body, something like a tribe, and the termination -ίς is common in tribe-names.

Among the puzzling features of the list is the repetition of certain names, either consecutively in the same group or from one group to another, thus:

⊖ωιάδαι: I 23–26 under Ἀμφινήων πάτραι.

Βουκολίδαι: I 30–32 under Χυτριείων.

Κρητινάδαι: I 29 under Χυτριείων; II 24, 26 under Χυτριείων; III 19 under Βουκολείων; T. Cam. 2. 2 in a different sequence with no heading preserved.

The vase which is discussed below was brought to the British Museum for identification by the late Mrs. Maitland Sikes in 1951, together with other vases of Cypriote manufacture, and eventually it has been placed on loan in the Museum. Its provenance is unknown, but its Cypriote companions and the nature of its form and decoration, as it will be discussed below, speak in favour of Cyprus.

(Plate 8a.) Fabric: buff-pinkish clay, good quality ‘Mycenaean’. Surface covered with a smooth buff-pinkish slip; decoration in brown to dark brown lustrous paint.

Shape: deep bowl, slightly concave sides, carinated profile; long cylindrical stem, disk-shaped foot with deep depression at bottom. Almost half of the cup and part of the foot are missing and have been restored in plaster.

Diam.: 10·2 cm.; height: 24·5 cm.

The inside of the cup is left blank except for a painted horizontal band just below the rim. The outside surface is decorated with horizontal bands encircling the cup, stem, and foot; thin horizontal lines encircle the lower half of the cup. The upper half is decorated with a frieze of identically repeated bull protomes, looking right. Three protomes survive and the horns of a fourth, but originally there must have been six. The space between them is filled with dotted circles.

The Aegina Gold Treasure in the British Museum has always been something of a mystery, because no other ancient jewellery has been found sufficiently like it to give any indication of its date or its fabric. At the time of its first appearance it was generally regarded as Late Mycenaean (i.e. L.H. III). More recently there has been a tendency to put it in the seventh century B.G., and one scholar even sees it as Phoenician. The Greek archaeologist Stais, moreover, held from the start that it was not a homogeneous deposit, but a mixture of Mycenaean and later elements. The time is clearly ripe for a thorough re-examination in the light of present archaeological knowledge.

What, in fact, do we know of the circumstances of its discovery? It was offered to the British Museum in 1891 through the agency of a member of a firm of sponge-importers, and was said to have been recently found in a tomb in Aegina. Although no other details were disclosed, this find-spot is inherently reasonable, since Aegina was at that time the centre of the Greek sponge trade. The Museum bought the Treasure in the following year, and in 1893 Evans published it, but could give no further details. Indeed, he implied that since the export of all antiquities from Greece was illegal, the jewellery must have been secretly excavated and smuggled out of the country, and nothing more would ever be known.

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.

In the course of his work at Knossos Sir Arthur Evans set aside a number of tablets, which remained there after the main collection had been removed to the Museum in Iraklion for safe keeping. Some of the fragments retained by Evans were rediscovered in the Villa Ariadne soon after the Second World War by Dr. N. Boufidis of the National Museum in Athens; drawings of them were sent by him to Sir John Myres, who published the texts for the first time in Scripta Minoa ii, where they are distinguished by the prefix ‘M’.

Other fragments of tablets which had remained at Knossos were discovered there by Dr. N. Platon in 1956, when he was working in the Stratigraphic Museum. One, published here as X 8101, has already been correctly transcribed in Scripta Minoa II and in The Knossos Tablets, in which publications it is numbered 04–94. A second fragment (S 8100), published here for the first time, belongs to the category of armour. The boxes in which the two tablets were found had ‘Little Palace’ labels on them, but unfortunately they are not a sure guide to the original provenience of the tablets themselves, which appear to have been stored without the exact knowledge of Evans. A third tablet (Og8102) was found about the same time in the neighbourhood of the pine-trees to the north-west of the Palace. All three pieces were brought to our attention by Dr. Platon, to whom we are most grateful for the suggestion that we should publish them. The photographs are the work of Mr. Androulakis of Iraklion, to whom we are indebted for his assistance.

The wall surveyed in this article is a continuous defensive fieldwork in north-western Attica, situated some six miles from Athens; it closes a prominent gap in the mountain-ring around the city, linking the ranges of Aigaleos to the south and Parnes to the north (Fig. 1). The local name for this wall, Τὸ Δέμα ‘The Link’, is both apt and specific and is being used in this article; in the past the wall has sometimes been referred to as the Aigaleos–Parnes wall and sometimes also as the Ano-Liosia wall from its relation to the nearest modern village.

The lack of a detailed survey of the Dema, combined with a complete absence of literary references in ancient authors, has compelled earlier writers to base their theories largely on grounds of historical probability. The divergences in their conclusions are not surprising, and clearly demonstrate the need for detailed information about the remains. We have accordingly made a field survey of the Dema and offer a full description of the wall in the belief that this will lead to a truer interpretation of its function and also its date.

In 1956 the Greek Archaeological Council decided that there should be no excavations at Mycenae. The Anastelosis Department was still busy with the rebuilding of the Cyclopean walls of the Citadel along the western side and along the stretch of ashlar work in conglomerate from the Lion Gate to the north-western angle. At the actual north-western angle the Cyclopean work of the northern wall of the acropolis had originally met the conglomerate work in ashlar with a straight vertical joint. This has now been obscured in the rebuilding. The Archaeological Service was also planning and preparing to put into effect various measures to protect the site from damage by the large numbers of tourists who visit it every year.

Since we were thus not able to excavate, we devoted ourselves to studying and preparing for publication the finds from the excavations of previous years in the museums at Athens and Nauplia. In Athens the Director of the National Museum, Dr. Karouzos, and his wife, Mrs. Semne Karouzou, made us very welcome and afforded us every possible facility. Mrs. Sakellariou and Mr. Papathanasopoulos, assistant curators in the museum, also gave us much friendly help. At Nauplia Mr. N. Verdeles, the Inspector of Antiquities, and Miss Protonotariou, the Epimeletes, made special arrangements for our work and gave us every support.

Stamatakes's excavations in the Grave Circle area revealed, although it was not recognized until much later, that Mycenae had been inhabited in the Early Bronze Age, the Early Helladic Period. This was confirmed by subsequent researches which produced Early Helladic material from the foot of the Ramp, outside the Grave Circle, beneath the South House and below the Palace. Now the recent work of Dr. Papademetriou and ourselves has yielded fresh evidence. He has found more E.H. material in Schliemann's Grave Circle and some possible Neolithic sherds as well. In the area of the Prehistoric Cemetery outside the Cyclopean walls to the north-west of the Lion Gate we have found in a mixed unstratified layer at the eastern foot of the mound or tumulus which covered the dome of the ‘Tomb of Aegisthus’ many fragments of E.H. pottery, both decorated and plain. Since the plain E.H. ware found is of a simple, thickish fabric hand-polished and usually of a dull red or of a mud colour, we had at times wondered whether some of these fragments might not almost be classed as Neolithic. This was especially so in the case of some of the fragments from the lowest strata at the foot of the Ramp. Unfortunately these fragments were lost during the war in the Nauplia Museum and cannot now be checked.

The discovery of Neolithic B pottery at the Argive Heraeum, and still more recently Dr. Caskey's most successful excavations at Lerna, encouraged us in the idea that a site like Mycenae was probably inhabited in Neolithic times also. Since the Early Helladic material is not stratified, except in areas like the foot of the Ramp or below the South House, it was hardly to be expected that Neolithic remains, if found, would be stratified. It is always possible, however, that some part of the site, not yet explored, may have escaped later disturbance or overbuilding. We have therefore now paid particular attention to the unstratified debris found above the Prehistoric Cemetery at the eastern foot of the Aegisthus mound. Among this we have found two sherds which are in our opinion almost certainly Neolithic.

In 1939 we cleared away the prickly oak scrub and excavated the rock ledge below the north temple terrace on the north summit of the acropolis of Mycenae. Here we found on the edge of the steep rock remains of a wall of largish blocks of limestone. These we believe to have been part of a Middle Helladic fortification wall running round the upper part of the acropolis. Behind this and held up by the wall were the ruins of two rooms and a thick deposit of M.H. pottery. Over this lay another stratum in which L.H. IIIB pottery was found. Here we found the splendid ivory group of two women and a boy which has already been published. Associated with it were a number of other objects, a male head in painted stucco, a sword pommel in white stone, some ornaments of gold and ivory, a number of beads of stone, paste, and faience including a lantern bead, and a cylinder of faience. The pottery, as stated, was of the L.H. IIIB style, but it was unfortunately lost in the Nauplia Museum during the war.

This collection of precious objects we suggested might have belonged to the Shrine of the Palace, which we believe can be be recognized in a small room with a cement floor underlying the western foundations of the temples built here in classical times over part of the ruins of the Mycenaean Palace.

In 1950 a fragment of a votive relief, said to have been found at the Pezoulia (which is the general name given locally to the area round the Cyclopean Terrace Building), was brought to Professor Wace, who included it with his Mycenae material and gave it the inventory number 50–512. It is now preserved in the museum at Nauplia. It consists of the upper right-hand portion of a pedimental stele of poor-quality white marble; the pediment with its acroteria is carved in relief upon a larger field of corresponding shape. There is a wide cornice below the pediment, underneath which a dedicatory inscription was carved in three lines. Below the inscription, the body of the stele contained a votive relief. The original right side of the fragment is preserved, although this is chipped and battered, obscuring some of the details at the edge. Elsewhere the stone is broken away, and the surface is so badly worn as to render the detail of the relief impossible to describe with any certainty. The preservation of the crowning central acroterion of the pediment indicates that a little over half of the total width of the stele survives, and the whole monument at its widest part (the base of the pediment) was some 35 cm. broad. The measurements of the fragment now preserved are: height 0·35 m.; width 0·2 m.; thickness 0·13 m.

In 1939, following up the suggestion of Tsountas that Schliemann's Grave Circle with the tombs found under the houses round it had once formed part of a Prehistoric Cemetery which had been, so to speak, cut in two when the Lion Gate and Cyclopean Citadel Wall were built, we excavated an area north-west of the Lion Gate outside the walls in the hope of finding tombs belonging to the Cemetery. We were not disappointed and we found fifteen tombs ranging in date from Middle Helladic to Late Helladic II. A report of this discovery with an account of the tombs has already been published.

In 1950 one of the objects of our excavation was to extend the exploration outside the Cyclopean walls of this area, now known as the Prehistoric Cemetery. The south-west corner of the area already excavated had proved to be rich in M.H. tombs (Graves XI, XIII–XV). We decided, therefore, to clear the immediately adjoining section to the south-east, where we hoped to find other graves of the Cemetery. The excavation was entrusted to Miss D. H. F. Gray, and her notebook has been freely drawn upon in the preparation of this report.

The part excavated divides naturally, as will be seen by the plan (Fig. 2), into a northern and a southern division which are separated by an east–west cross–wall (A–A on the plan). This wall is the eastern continuation of a wall found in the south-western area in 1939 just to the south of Grave XIII. Immediately to the east of Grave XIII the wall is crossed by a north–south wall, B–B, at a higher level. This later wall seems almost certainly Hellenistic, for it belongs to the uppermost strata of the area which contained Hellenistic tiles, loom weights, and pottery. It runs northwards for about 2·50 m. to 3·00 m. and then returns at a right angle eastwards, C–C, forming the southern boundary of the area excavated in 1939. The return at its east end runs into another, rather irregular north–south Hellenistic wall, D–D, which we took as the limit of our excavations in this direction.

The sequence of styles in the evolution of Late Helladic pottery is now well recognized. A sequence dating of finds is thus archaeologically possible. Absolute dating of finds, however, is another and more difficult question. Nothing Late Helladic has any absolute date of its own. We can, however, arrive at approximate absolute dates from Late Helladic pottery found in datable contexts in Egypt or from Egyptian objects found in Late Helladic deposits in Greece. But we cannot always be sure that Egyptian objects found in Greece are contemporary with the Helladic objects with which they are associated. For instance, in Tomb 518 at Mycenae, which is of L.H. I–II date, was found part of an Egyptian porphyry bowl which dates from the First or Second Dynasty. No one would for a moment believe that this Egyptian bowl and the tomb could be contemporary. There are similar cases from Asine and Knossos. It is logical that an early object can be found in a late context, but no one could ever accept that a late object can be found in an early context, unless there has been much disturbance of the stratigraphy.

The three phases of Late Helladic III pottery A, B, and C can be distinguished among themselves with reasonable certainty, although there are always examples which stand on the borderlines. We know that the later Late Helladic IIIA pottery is contemporary with the Amarna Age, because it occurred in quantity in the ruins of Akhenaten's capital. Its latest absolute date is about 1375–1350 B.C., according to the dating placed by Egyptologists on the Amarna Age. There are even a few sherds from Amarna which, if found isolated, might possibly be called L.H. IIIB. Here again another possible difficulty can be glimpsed. A borderline sherd might be called by one archaeologist A and by another B.

In the course of a search for tombs in the Knossos area during the spring of 1951 I noticed some large blocks of limestone masonry with curved edges that had just been removed from a newly planted vineyard, the property of Georgios Kargatzes, near the top of the hill forming the southern end of the long ridge on the northern tip of which stands the Isopata Royal Tomb. The site is about 250 metres north-west of the Zafer Papoura cemetery of Late Minoan tombs dug by Evans in 1904, and at the bottom of the slope to the west is a high bank with important Geometric tombs (Knossos Survey 15), explored by Hogarth during the first year of the excavations at Knossos in 1900.

The curving blocks, together with the situation on the top of a hill less than half a kilometre south of the Kefala tholos tomb (Knossos Survey 8), excavated by Mr. R. W. Hutchinson in 1939, immediately raised hopes that another tholos tomb might await discovery here; and the fragments of Minoan pottery everywhere on and below the surface encouraged this belief. Dr. N. Platon, Ephor of Antiquities for Crete, visited the site and granted permission for the School to make trials to discover from what the blocks came. The Director of the School, Mr. J. M. Cook, gave his sanction for the work and asked me to undertake it. The plans were drawn by Mr. Piet de Jong, then the School's Curator at Knossos; the drawings of the vases are by Miss Susan Wood.

Ancient tradition, as recorded by Strabo and Pausanias, placed the Seven Cities offered by Agamemnon to Achilles in the area of the shores of the Messenian Gulf, between Kardamyle on the south-east and Methone on the south-west. The phrase πᾶσαι δ᾿ ἐγγὺς ἁλός roughly confines them to the coastal area, but it need not exclude identifications with sites farther inland, provided that these are not too far distant from the sea, and are connected with it by easy routes. For example, Kambos (?Ἐνόπη) and the site of the classical Thouria (?Ἄνθεια or Αἴπεια) lie 5 kilometres and 6 kilometres inland respectively, but their territory may have extended towards the coast, and the distance from the sea is not great. I have assumed as a working hypothesis that the Seven Cities actually existed in the Late Mycenaean Period, although possibly with slightly different names, and although they are not mentioned in the Achaean Catalogue of Ships in the Iliad; and I have taken the position of Mycenaean sites in the area to be the most relevant factor to the problem of locating the Seven Cities.

I have carried out surface exploration in south Messenia over a period of five to six weeks with the purpose of finding out the pattern of the Mycenaean and earlier occupation of the district on the shores of the Messenian Gulf, and I shall give an account of the results obtained at each site, together with a discussion of previous work carried out by others, and then compare the facts with the testimony of the ancient writers, in particular Strabo and Pausanias, before stating my conclusions as to the locations of the Seven Cities, and attempting to reconstruct their history. The relevant sites will be discussed in geographical order from south-east to south-west. (See the map of the area, Fig. 1.)