For many years, interpretation of the history of the Middle and Late Bronze Age in the Cyclades has depended almost entirely on the late nineteenth-century excavations of the British School at Phylakopi on Melos. This site has been especially significant as the only one with a comprehensive stratigraphie sequence.

Recent major excavations on Kea (Ayia Irini) and Thera (Akrotiri) have vastly increased our knowledge of the second-millennium Cyclades, but Phylakopi remains of outstanding importance. From the publication and from the Daybooks kept by Duncan Mackenzie it is clear that the technical standards of the excavation were extremely high for their time. It is unfortunate, however, that precise details about the contexts of individual finds are lacking from Phylakopi. Such details are vital if we are to make any useful reassessment of the history and external relations of the site in terms of subsequent excavations and studies.

During the campaigns at Old Smyrna in 1948–51 several Clazomenian sarcophagi came to light. The directors of the excavations, Professors E. Akurgal and J. M. Cook, kindly asked me to publish them, but by some mischance the completed notes and drawings did not reach me and I was not importunate. Drawings of decoration and shape and most of the measurements came from Miss E. A. B. Petty (now Mrs. G. U. S. Corbett), details of discovery and photographs from Professor J. M. Cook. Mr. J. S. Cole most obligingly checked many points for me in Izmir. I have myself examined only nos. 2, 3, 5, and 11.

Most of the efforts of students of Greek architecture have been devoted to two questions: what the buildings were like and when they were built, rather than to the manner of their design. This emphasis has obviously been justified, for those are the primary questions which must be reasonably well answered before the ‘whys’ and ‘hows’ can be approached. But our understanding of these primary questions has reached a stage where attention to the secondary questions is justified, not only because of their intrinsic interest, but also because a detailed study of proportion has become an established tool of stylistic dating. Some understanding of, or at least some hypothesis about, the way such proportions were envisaged and put into practice by ancient architects is necessary, in order to find out what proportions should most usefully be considered, and at what point small changes in them may represent a significant stylistic change.

A Strange and unusual relic of ancient times in Crete is the tank cut in the rock near the sea for storing fish alive. Sinclair Hood and John L. Leatham some years ago made a detailed study of remains of fish tanks on the northern coast of Crete. These tanks belong to two groups, one at Chersonesos in central Crete, with a row of three tanks of various sizes, and one on the shore opposite the island of Mochlos in eastern Crete, with two adjacent and almost identical compartments. The authors date the tanks to Roman times and interpret them with the help of a rich documentation from ancient sources, mainly the two Roman agricultural writers Columella (viii. 16–17) and Varro (iii. 17).

Since 1939 the British and Helleno-British excavations at Mycenae have produced sixty-six coins, sixty-three of which are classified as Greek. Most of these probably circulated in the Hellenistic kome of Mycenae. This fortified dependency of Argos is mentioned by Plutarch as the place where Aristippus, the tyrant of Argos, was killed in 235 B.C. It was certainly founded earlier, however. The most likely time appears to have been in the later fourth or early third century B.C.

The following article by Mr. Steven Diamant of the American School of Classical Studies concerns a stone figurine that came to light in 1962 in the House with the Idols or, as the site was called in 1962, the Citadel House. Mr. Diamant did not take part in the 1962 excavations, so some mention of the context of the find is necessary.

In a previous article I argued that the one major stratified deposit published as LH I and accepted as such by Furumark, from Korakou, was in fact late LH IIA, and considered the implications of this redating for the development of LH II. If this view is accepted, it raises the question: what, then, is LH I ? In this article I wish to describe what I believe to be LH I; as I am not able to make use of a good closed deposit, I shall rely largely upon published material, much of which I have seen or handled, identified by style, shape, and features of manufacture. Since photographs of this material are readily accessible in well-known publications, I show only a few characteristic pieces (plate 20).

The following is a collection of twenty-two epitaphs observed by me during travels in Boiotia between 1965 and 1970. They represent mainly central Boiotia and the Copaïs; the eastern plains have been less productive. The texts are presented in catalogue form following the same geographic sequence as IG vii. The main interest of these brief texts is, of course, prosopographic, and short comments on the names are added as relevant. All dimensions of stones are given in metres, and of letters in centimetres.

The publication of such a group of humble epitaphs needs no excuse: the very perishability of these stones makes it the incumbent duty of the field-worker to preserve, however imperfectly, the record of all such material as he observes. In 1965 men were at work with sledge-hammers breaking up ancient worked blocks in heaps at Erimókastro, heaps such as those which contained nos. 1 and 2.

The discovery of so many tumulus-burials since 1955, especially in Albania and Greece, has lent an added importance to the tumulus-burials which were excavated by W. Dörpfeld in Leucas. The dating of the latter has always been controversial; and it should be reconsidered in the light of the new evidence. This article is concerned with the relationship only between the Leucas tumuli and those in Albania and northern Greece, because I have discussed elsewhere some of the links between the tumuli in Leucas and those in the Peloponnese and Attica.

Amber has long been recognized as an important indicator of Mycenaean foreign contacts. Though much has been written, no thorough survey of the topic has yet been undertaken. The chief purpose of this article is to present a corpus, as complete as the authors can make it, of the known Mycenaean amber finds, together with those from adjacent areas.

Since the nineteenth century amber objects in Italy and Greece have generally been considered by scholarly opinion to have been imported from the Baltic, and a number of finds, including Schliemann's from the Shaft Graves, were subjected to rudimentary chemical analyses to ‘prove’ this, the criterion being the presence of succinic acid. Navarro in 1925 traced the route the amber was supposed to have taken by charting the distribution of finds in central Europe in the Bronze and Iron Ages.

The published corpus of LM IB Marine Style pottery from Knossos is small. It includes:

1. 1. A jar from the Royal Road, AR (1961–2) 28 fig. 36.

2. 2. A jar from the South-west Corner of the Palace, PM iv 280 fig. 215.

3. 3. A ewer from the House of the Sanctuary, ibid, iv 215 fig. 165.

4. 4. A tall alabastron from the Tomb of the Double Axes, TDoAx. 87.

5. 5. A bridge-spouted jar from a chamber tomb near the Temple Tomb, PM iv 279 fig. 214.

6. 6. A fragment from a jar, ibid, ii 506 fig. 310a.

7. 7. A fragment from a flower-pot, ibid, ii 506 fig. 310b–c.

A Survey of the Marine Style shows that we may categorize octopods and argonauts into Types A and B, according to the drawing of the suckers in their tentacles. Type A suckers enclose a dot; Type B have no dot. All the instances of Type A and Type B are displayed against a crowded Marine background.

We may further distinguish a third class (Type C) of octopods and argonauts; small compact creatures whose suckers are reduced to knobs, while the argonaut shells are no more than sketchily drawn, the striations being placed haphazardly, either vertically or horizontally. These motifs are displayed against an open background.

The excavation to be described below was an emergency undertaking and no more than a test in size and purpose. The finds, though by no means spectacular, were considerable in number and, being mostly contemporary, deserve publication despite the provisional nature of the excavation.

A villager planting tomatoes at Knossos brought to light a mass of plain pottery in the field of Michaelis Phrondarakis, situated in plot no. 2173 on the Greek Economic Survey (1950) Plan of the village; the locality is called Sochara and lies on the rising ground above the village coffee-shops, almost due west of the Palace. The discovery was reported to the Greek Archaeological Service which, after a little digging, collected much pottery and some plaster objects. Considering the site deserved fuller investigation, the Ephor, Dr. St. Alexiou, invited the School to carry out this work as a matter of urgency.

Sellopoulo is a small village, on the east bank of the river Kairetos, less than 2 kilometres north of Knossos. The fields immediately bordering the stream are fairly flat but the land soon rises in a series of step-like hills. Here surface soil is thin and the rock immediately underlying it is mostly the local kouskouras, a soft limestone easily cut. The geology of the region is, then, very suitable for chamber tombs. Indeed, the extensive Zafer Papoura cemetery, excavated by Evans, is on the west slope above the river, almost exactly opposite the tombs we shall be considering.

Hogarth was the first to excavate at Sellopoulo. In 1900, in low-lying ground on the southwest edge of the village, he found what he describes as a ‘tholus tomb built of small stones’ in which were ‘three rudely painted chest urns standing side by side, all rifled in antiquity’. This tomb can no longer be seen.

The excavations in the Citadel House area have produced an appreciable number of seals and sealings, of which the importance is increased by the late contexts (LH IIIB 1 or 2, LH IIIC), in which the majority of them were found.

Of the eighteen objects discussed here, four are complete seals (nos. 1–3, 5), one is an unfinished seal (no. 4), five are broken beads probably used as seals (nos. 6–10), and eight are sealings (nos. 11–18), of very unequal state of preservation and importance. Four of the latter (nos. 11, 14, 15, 17), are of really fine workmanship and of considerable iconographical interest. Not only are their subjects clearly recognizable, but they are also worth a closer study and discussion, because of their unusual arrangement and the presence of some unexpected details.

This document is one of a number of Attic proxeny-decrees that A. G. Woodhead considered to be evidence for Athenian concern with the south-west Aegean towards the end of the fifth century B.C. He identified the honorand Proxenos as a native of Chalke, a small island off the west coast of Rhodes. I share the view of J. and L. Robert that Woodhead has not proved his case either for the date or for the ethnic.

The inscription is non-stoichedon, its engraving inexpert and careless, with several mistakes untidily erased and corrected. There is a mixture of Attic and Ionic letter-forms in the first three lines (gamma, eta, and lambda are Ionic, while xi is written chi sigma); otherwise the lettering is Attic, indicating a date before 403 B.C.

Debla is the name of a long east-west ridge forming one of the first foothills of the White Mountains of western Crete, above the great plain west of Khania (Plate 48a). The ridge attains a height of 542 m. and the Minoan settlement lies on the summit area (Figs. 1–2, Plate 48b).

The site was first investigated in 1968 by Messrs. E. Vardhinoyannis and J. Tsiphetakis during excavations of the Hellenistic and Roman town on the Kastellos, a hill north of and well below the Debla ridge. In 1968 the site was also explored by Professor P. Faure, who published a description and illustrations. P. Warren, Mrs. Warren, and Mr. Tsiphetakis subsequently made a visit on 19 May 1970.

Italy, like several other areas of prehistoric Europe, enjoyed a flourishing ‘Copper Age’— a period when objects of copper but not of bronze were in use, although not plentifully, and when various other changes in custom and material culture occurred, including transformations in the conventions of burial. These changes, like many in European prehistory, are often explained in terms of the ‘diffusion’ of ‘cultural influences’ from more advanced areas, notably the Aegean, or by the arrival of new groups of people from that region who would, it is sometimes thought, have set up ‘colonies’.