Excavations carried out by The Helike Project in the Helike plain on the south-western coast of the Gulf of Corinth, north-west Peloponnese, since 2000, have brought to light the well-preserved remains of a coastal Early Helladic (EH) II–III settlement. The site developed as a densely organised settlement during the EH II period and underwent a major architectural transformation at the beginning of the following EH III. In addition to a reorganisation of the settlement on a rectangular town grid, the outstanding feature among the buildings discovered is that of a monumental Corridor House. The newly organised building plan of the settlement was most probably associated with the rise of a new socio-economic structure at the time, including advanced technological specialisation, and possibly the establishment of administrative control within the town supporting communal interests, together with a new emphasis on the status of the private individual.

Considering EH Helike in its broader geographical context, the site's prosperity marks an exception to the widespread decline attested in the mainland settlements of the time, and links it rather with centres across the Aegean Sea and further east. In addition to similarities at the level of settlement organisation, such overseas links and contacts are conspicuously evidenced at Helike through the presence of an array of exotic, prestigious items and commodities including an outstanding depas cup of Trojan/Anatolian type, ornaments of precious metal from the east or the north and Melian obsidian tools, and by the adoption of ‘international’ fashions of life such as the ‘serve and drink’ culture and ‘potter's marks’. In this paper, we present the range of material evidence from the EH III town of Helike illustrating its various spheres of foreign contact, and discuss possible insights into the social and economic conditions that generated the town's floruit and cosmopolitanism in EH III.

Discussing Early Minoan (EM) architecture in Crete, it is difficult for one to bypass the site of Vasiliki, located on the Isthmus of Ierapetra. Vasiliki was occupied during a number of prehistoric periods. Its EM IIB houses are among the best preserved, incorporating architectural features that reveal how the inhabitants managed the transition between single- and two-storied buildings, and how they, usually, reached their upper levels, probably without the use of stairways. This paper singles out three separate houses from among the group of rooms originally called the ‘Red House’ by its discoverer, Richard Seager; it presents their sequencing, the order in which they were probably built, and how their first floors and roofs were reached. Additionally, a detailed study of House C suggests that one of the large ‘rooms’ was actually open to the sky, and had served partly as an interior court, which may well have been the predecessor of the later interior courts (or light wells) characterising the elite architectural style, typical of the later Middle and Late Minoan periods.

The aim of this paper is to re-examine the painted fragments discovered by Arthur Evans and his team in the Throne Room at Knossos in 1900. We have tried to integrate systematically the extant archival data stored in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford and the archaeological remains at Herakleion in an attempt to retrace the history of discovery of the paintings. In our view, the iconography of this programme places its execution at the onset of Late Minoan (LM) II. We see the inclusion of both ‘traditional’ (Neopalatial) and ‘innovative’ (Final Palatial) elements in the composition as suggestive of an attempt on behalf of the artist(s) and the commissioner(s) to blend artistic traditions in the creation of a new, yet still recognisable, image of power. We assess the implications stemming from this suggestion and interpret the decorative programme of the Throne Room at Knossos as part and expression of the emergence of the wanax ideology.

To date, the pottery production of Rhodes, Kos and other ‘East Dorian’ islands and coastal areas remains little understood. This article presents and discusses new neutron activation analysis (NAA) of eighth–sixth-century bc vessels found on Rhodes and in related areas, placing them in the wider context of past and present archaeometric research. The results highlight the role of Kos as a leading regional centre of painted pottery production and export in the seventh–sixth centuries bc, notably of ‘East Dorian’ plates. This includes the famous ‘Euphorbos plate’, which can now be attributed to Koan production. Contemporary Archaic pottery workshops on Rhodes, in contrast, had a less ambitious, if diverse, output, ranging from vessels in a Sub-Geometric tradition, imitation Corinthian wares and modest local versions of Koan- and Ionian-style plates to finely potted and richly decorated ‘Vroulian’ cups and black-figured situlae. It was imported mainland and East Greek wares, however, that dominated the island's consumption of Archaic painted wares. This represents a departure from the preceding Geometric period, which was characterised by a local pottery production of considerable scale and quality, although receptivity to external influences remained a consistent feature throughout later periods. As patterns of demand were changing, the island's craft production appears to have concentrated on a different range of goods in which high-quality figured finewares played a lesser role.

Research on the cities of the Classical Greek world has traditionally focused on mapping the organisation of urban space and studying major civic or religious buildings. More recently, newer techniques such as field survey and geophysical survey have facilitated exploration of the extent and character of larger areas within urban settlements, raising questions about economic processes. At the same time, detailed analysis of residential buildings has also supported a change of emphasis towards understanding some of the functional and social aspects of the built environment as well as purely formal ones. This article argues for the advantages of analysing Greek cities using a multidisciplinary, multi-scalar framework which encompasses all of these various approaches and adds to them other analytical techniques (particularly micro-archaeology). We suggest that this strategy can lead towards a more holistic view of a city, not only as a physical place, but also as a dynamic community, revealing its origins, development and patterns of social and economic activity. Our argument is made with reference to the research design, methodology and results of the first three seasons of fieldwork at the city of Olynthos, carried out by the Olynthos Project.

Studies of Christianisation in mainland Greece have indicated different processes, planned and unplanned, of religious change. Memory and tradition were drawn on to help situate the earliest churches within existing social and religious structures without creating significant tension. Using the methodology developed for the study of the Peloponnese, the aim of this work is to examine three topographically and politically distinct regions (Crete, Cyprus and Lycia) to assess the extent to which various network connections provided a conduit for religious change throughout the Late Antique period.

The years 1289–1313 witnessed particularly prolific minting activities at different southern and central Greek mints on behalf of different polities. The coin issues are of great economic and political relevance, and therefore of interest to modern historians. Our understanding of these is based on traditional sources, either numismatic (types and finds), or historical. This paper aims to investigate the possibilities of adding further details to the picture through archaeometry. Specifically, tournois pennies of the three main mints of the region (Clarentza, Thebes, Naupaktos) excavated at Ancient Corinth were analysed according to two different non-destructive methods, X-ray fluorescence spectrometry (XRF) and laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS). The resulting relative silver percentages and the fingerprints of the trace elements have supported our attempts to put the different coin types in chronological order and to add detail to the context and intent for each one of these. A vivid picture of monetary production emerges. The different issuing authorities were usually intent on maintaining a decent standard while variously trying to put pressure on rivals or to harmonise their productions with their allies. All the analysed mints were commercial in character, though they were subject to the great political changes affecting Greece in this period, the ambitions of the Angevin dynasty, the various challenges which it faced in Athens, the Peloponnese and the western Mainland, and finally the destructive arrival of the Catalans. In times of need, specifically military, these same mints could therefore rely on further bullion which reached them through internal or external political channels.

The defence of Late Byzantine (fourteenth–fifteenth centuries) frontier zones frequently became the responsibility of military elites, borderlords, who enjoyed absolute power in these areas and immunity from any fiscal or other obligation towards the Byzantine state. In this article I present the case studies of two borderlord families: the brothers and military officials Alexios and John, and the Genoese family of the Gattilusi, who ruled large areas around the Northern Aegean in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and participated actively in their defence at a time when they were surrounded by enemies and plagued by piracy. The aim of the article is twofold. First, I consider the borderlords’ building activities, modes of self-representation and the creation of new geographies as strategies for establishing control and legitimising their power. Second, I explore how the rise of these borderlords fits with Byzantine imperial policies and corresponds to changes in the character of Late Byzantine imperial authority and the role of the Byzantine emperor within and beyond the empire. Over the course of this article I hope to highlight the complexity of the political and economic situation in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and contribute to an understanding of modes of Late Byzantine government and power that move beyond simplistic frameworks of decline and fall.

This paper considers the recruitment of young archaeologists into the German military on Crete and its impact upon the development of archaeological agendas during the period of the Third Reich. It explores – as a case study – the archaeological activity of August Schörgendorfer, an Austrian archaeologist, on German-occupied Crete. Schörgendorfer enlisted as a Wehrmacht officer, was upgraded to a Kunstschutz officer through the intervention of Major General Julius Ringel, and in 1941–2 undertook illicit excavations at Knossos and in the Mesara. By presenting data collected through archival research and Schörgendorfer's previously unpublished photo album of Crete, I explore his ideological trajectories and his archaeological itineraries on the island under occupation. Integrating the latter with the recent historiography of Nazi-era archaeology illuminates undocumented aspects of the Wehrmacht’s archaeological research on the island. Facets of the cultural policies of the German Archaeological Institute and wider questions of archaeological ethics are informed by analysing the entanglement of archaeological institutions and archaeologists with the political turmoil of the era of World War II.

This article examines the impact of sea level (water table) on archaeological research at Butrint (Bouthrotos/Buthrotum) from 1928 to 2014. Rising relative sea levels over the past three thousand years have shaped the actions not only of its ancient inhabitants but also of its modern archaeologists, conditioning archaeological objectives, fieldwork and the interpretation of the archaeological record. Butrint's first archaeologist, Luigi M. Ugolini, considered groundwater to be a detriment to archaeological research at the site. Subsequent archaeologists have viewed it as the limit of excavation. Battling water at Butrint, archaeologists have shared a universal perception of groundwater as an enemy and thereby have overlooked one of Butrint's most important areas of archaeological research – its wetland and wet-site archaeology. The Roman Forum Excavations (RFE) Project undertook the first wet-site excavations at Butrint, reaching depths of up to four metres below the water table in stratigraphic excavations in the ancient urban centre. The results demonstrate that the ancient urban centre formed much later than is presently thought: the lower city emerged as dryland in the second half of the second century bc. Relative sea levels have increased since antiquity at many coastal regions in the Mediterranean, often submerging archaeological sites either partially or completely. Butrint is a case study that shows how sea level is inextricably tied to archaeological practice and interpretation at this major ancient Mediterranean seaport.