The three most recent issues of Archaeology in Greece have looked at the preliminary data that has been published on the ‘remarkable decade’ of discoveries from all over Greece spanning the Athens Olympics of 2004. As this material has begun to be absorbed in summary form, and has been made available to readers via AGOnline, the range of chapters included in this issue of AG, which covers reports made available in 2013–2014, turns in a more consciously thematic direction.

This change of emphasis has also been enabled by a redesign of the format and style of AG. Our aim is to make the content more accessible, as well as easier to absorb. We hope that it will be more attractive, too. The Newsround section is an innovation intended to provide readers with a quick survey of important developments that are not otherwise referred to in other chapters of this year's copy. In her View from Greece, Catherine Morgan refers to a number of recent developments that we hope to cover in future editions of AG. These include conference reports and other publications on the Ionian and Aegean islands, and on the countryside of Attica. As contributors to AG, we hope that the selection of news items, alongside the thematic and regional reports, will give readers a clear idea of the range of new developments in Greek archaeological field research.

While much of the news reported from Greece continues to focus on the harsh realities of continuing financial crisis, it is a pleasure to publicize the strength and diversity of archaeological research, and the major developments which continue to make Greece's sites and museums ever more attractive and accessible to visitors whatever their interests. This has been an exciting year, not least thanks to the Greek presidency of the Council of the European Union which has put culture in all forms under the spotlight (the exhibition Greece's Europe. Colonies and Coinage from the Alpha Bank Collection at the Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki was but one of the commemorative events held in Greece). Further new discoveries through the summer of 2014 continue to tantalize, as we will observe presently.

This section, a new addition to Archaeological Reports for 2014, is not intended to be exhaustive. Rather it is designed to draw attention to those discoveries which, for reasons of geography, chronology or character, do not appear elsewhere within this year's report, but which nevertheless deserve to be highlighted. The very varied nature of this material has meant that, for the most part, it has proved far easier to arrange this content chronologically than thematically.

Discussions of method, of the different ways in which we may try and answer research questions, are perhaps rarer in the historiography of ancient Greece than discussions of theory. Theory has, quite rightly, played a significant role in historiography, but the comparative unimportance of method is rather mysterious. Methods are central to archaeology because a researcher has to make choices, from the very start of a project, about which methods will be the most appropriate for delivering answers to the chosen research questions. The archaeological journal Antiquity has a special section on Method. The content of that section may seem to be rather more technical than the kinds of methods I want to consider here. Nevertheless, all discussions of method, or methodology, help to give substance to theory; they help us to make clearer the connections between evidence and theory. Stewart's paper, in this issue of AG, offers a series of reflections on the values and limitations of survey methods. Archaeologists are conscious of the fact that different methods produce different results. This can sometimes be perplexing for historians, as I discuss further below. Method refers not just to the ways in which we go about a particular research project. It also applies to the broad perspectives within which we do research. Catherine Morgan's report on the work of the BSA in 2013–2014 draws together the many new strands that are connecting people and places of the past, but also contemporary preoccupations with environments, societies and their habits in the recent past.

2013–2014 marked the mid-point in the School's current five-year research programme, when long-planned projects reached fruition and new initiatives and collaborations gained pace. Established strengths were developed (in the Fitch Laboratory, the Knossos Research Centre and in our long-standing field projects) and numerous new opportunities exploited. Archaeology remains central, and it was gratifying that Heritage Daily's top-10 archaeological discoveries worldwide in 2013 included the Neolithic settlement at Koutroulou Magoula with its exceptional collection of figurines (www.heritagedaily.com/2013/12/top-10-archaeological-discoveries-for-2013/100570; Fig. 33; ID1889, ID2762, ID2902). The Koutroulou Magoula Project is a collaboration between the School and the Ministry of Culture and Sport directed by Nina Kyparissi-Apostolika (Director Emerita, EPSNE) and Yannis Hamilakis (Southampton). A programme of 3D scanning of the Koutroulou figurines conducted in 2013–2014 is revealing much important new detail of dress, jewellery and anatomy.

Archaeological data from the city of Athens entered into Archaeology in Greece Online this year are derived from recent work announced in the press or unpublished field reports and from the latest Archaiologikon Deltion, covering work in 2005. The difficulty of bridging this gap of almost a decade is eased greatly by the publication of a series of lectures held at the Museum of Cycladic Art in Athens by members of the Ephoreias of Athens and Attica, covering in a much more detailed way than ADelt allows many important excavations and research projects. The support of the Goulandris and Latsis Foundations, both in organizing the lectures and in publishing them in timely fashion and at very low cost (€10 per volume), is to be applauded (M. Dogka-Toli and S. Oikonomidou (eds), Αρχαιολογικές συμβολές. A: Αττική – ΚΣΤ’ και Β’Εφορείες Προïστορικών & Κλασικών Αρχαιοτήτων and Β: Αττική – Α’ και Γ’ Εφορείες Προïστορικών & Κλασικών Αρχαιοτήτων, Athens 2013). Further information, images and bibliography for the following summary can be found by searching the given ID numbers at AGOnline:www.chronique.efa.gr.

In his recent book The Ancient Harbours of the Piraeus I.1, Bjorn Lovén notes that archaeological investigation of the Classical naval installations in the Piraeus goes back almost as far as the discipline of archaeology in the modern Greek state (Lovén 2011: 15). This enduring archaeological interest in the Piraeus installations is not some ungrounded fascination, but rests on the importance of these facilities not only for the Piraeus, but for the whole of Classical Athens. The commission of these installations was an integral part of a Classical building programme that saw the construction of triremes and the fortification of the Piraeus peninsula. As Vincent Gabrielsen (2007: 256–57) has shown, the building of warships is not necessarily synonymous with the construction of a navy. The latter implies the centralization of war reserves by the city-state and the provision of infrastructure (naval facilities and walls to protect both these facilities and the ships stationed in them), and it would be essential for the state to maintain and operate these resources. Investigations of the Piraeus shipsheds therefore shed light not only on the size of Athenian triremes, but also on the overall planning and works undertaken by the Athenian state in Classical times, in order to command and sustain a large navy.

The much shorter Archaiologikon Deltion for the single year of 2005 invariably offers far fewer reports on the work of the Archaeological Service than the four-year volume with which we were presented last year. This, in itself, is no bad thing, although the geographical and chronological balance generated by such a large dataset is notable by its absence. This unevenness is, as ever, partially offset by the publication of fieldwork, although certain areas maintain a far more visible archaeological presence than others. This is particularly true for the northeastern Peloponnese, which has, in recent years, been the recipient of an almost unparalleled focus of both research and rescue excavation; a fact reflected in the significant contribution made to this year's report by the edited proceedings of the conference The Corinthia and the Northeast Peloponnese: Topography and History from Prehistoric Times until the End of Antiquity (Kissas and Niemeier 2013). A total of 56 individual papers provide details on sites that range in date from the Neolithic to the Byzantine period. A great strength of this collection lies in the contribution of so many current and former staff of the Archaeological Service, and, of the numerous papers that engage directly or indirectly with the archaeology of the Archaic to Roman period, several are discussed in greater depth in the course of this report. A complementary Hesperia supplement detailing the current state of prehistoric and historic research on the Corinthian Isthmus is due to appear before the end of the year (Gebhard and Gregory forthcoming), as is a study of material from Henry Robinson's 1961–1962 excavation in the North Cemetery (Slane forthcoming). The study of religious practice during the Classical period benefits from the publication of the first volume of material from excavations conducted by the Canadian Institute in Greece between 1994 and 2001 in the Sanctuary of Athena at Stymphalos (Schaus 2014a), while the consolidation of synthetic regional studies and individual site reports within Villae Rusticae: Family and Market-oriented Farms in Greece under Roman Rule (Rizakis and Touratsoglou 2013) will no doubt ensure that it becomes a standard text for the study of the rural economy of Roman Greece (see Stewart, this volume).

The past ten years have been particularly prolific for research in Boeotian epigraphy: excavations and museum work carried out by the ephoreias, along with the activities of international projects such as the Boeotia Project, have yielded many exciting new documents and generated a very dynamic scholarly production. Epigraphy is therefore particularly well served in Boeotia, as the prominent place given to inscriptions in the recently refurbished museums of Chaironeia and, in particularly, Schimatari — and, no doubt, in the future new museum of Thebes too — exemplifies further. The present synopsis cannot cover the entirety of scholarship produced over the past ten years, but it is hoped that it provides a fair overview. Instead of a geographical approach, a thematic arrangement has been preferred.

This has been a relatively quiet year in terms of newly-discovered Cretan material appearing for the first time in print. The main event was the continued publication of the backlog of Archaiologikon Deltion with the appearance of the 2005 volume. This, of course, contained a lot less material than last year's volume, which covered four years, 2001–2004. As a result, the disadvantages of late publication were more apparent, since all the most notable finds will already be known to the wider community from other sources, leaving only the most minor of rescue excavations as truly new material.

Galatas provides a good example as one of the major Bronze Age sites being excavated in 2005 (ID4536). The excavation witnessed an important new discovery in the form of a monolithic “baetyl” and associated exedra to the south of the site's central building. The value of this discovery is that it adds to a relatively small corpus of enigmatic unhewn monolithic stones that appear as focal points in open-air public spaces in Minoan settlements. As such, it adds considerably to our understanding of the type, especially because, more so than in other places, signs of the activities associated with it appear to be preserved. This very important find has already made it into the secondary literature, being one of the primary case studies in Sam Crooks” (2013) book on Minoan baetyls. Less widely known are the results of the Galatas survey (ID4537), which appear in this year's ADelt in a preliminary form. Intriguing is the statement that the number of sites around Galatas increases sharply in the Neopalatial period, and that many of them are large. Galatas itself has a rather rocky Neopalatial history and in the fullness of time it will be interesting to see whether the story from the site and that from the wider area coincide, or whether there is some opposing or complementary dynamic. Also of great potential importance is the mention of a Minoan mason's mark in a quarry that is interpreted as providing blocks for the central building at Galatas. Masons” marks have been the centre of controversy ever since they were first discovered, with the majority of scholars interpreting them as in some way religious, whilst a few have suggested instead that they had some more practical purpose, relating to the work crews constructing monumental buildings (a good up-to-date treatment with previous bibliography is Begg 2004). If this identification is confirmed, it might significantly strengthen the minority side of the argument.

Macedonia continues to offer a great deal of new material evidence, including much systematic information, as well as major, occasionally sensational discoveries (see Catherine Morgan's “View from Greece”, above), whether in those areas that are considered to be the historical “heartlands” of the Argead kingdom, Pieria and Emathia, the mountain regions of the northern and western Pindus or in eastern Macedonia, which comprises areas with a rather different historical and cultural profile. The administrative area of Thrace has, by contrast, played a more modest role in recent field research, except for a limited number of key sites and occasional finds resulting from development work along the route of the new Egnatia Odos. The “remarkable decade” preceding and following the Athens Olympics of 2004 has played out differently in northern Greece, where the proliferation of archaeological investigations has been driven largely by development work in and around Thessaloniki (and, to a lesser extent, Edessa and Veroia), particularly along routes connected to the national highway and the network of underground shafts and tunnels associated with the construction of Thessaloniki's metro line and stations along its axis.

This paper provides a brief overview of the history and main achievements of archaeobotanical work in Greece to date, with the aim of highlighting its potential and creating a framework in which future work can be contextualized. The term “archaeobotany” is used here in its narrow sense, referring to the study of plant macroremains, such as seeds, fruits and other plant parts, and excluding charcoal studies or “anthracology” and analyses of microremains (for example pollen, phytoliths), which have developed to become separate subdisciplines.

[W]hile pretending to throw some light upon classical authors by careful observation of the manners of the present day, romantic travellers succeeded in fact in accommodating reality to their dreams … by creating for themselves and for their readers carefully edited portraits of modern Greece that transformed the present into the living image of the past (Saïd 2005: 291).

Thirty years ago archaeological field survey promised to reshape radically our understanding of the countryside (Keller and Rupp 1983: 1–5). Traditional archaeological approaches to cities and monuments were increasingly seen to be extensions of textual research, and research on the rural landscape was envisaged as a way to access the other side of the traditional urban-rural dichotomy (though see the comments in Alcock 2007: 671–72). Some scholars estimated that, in the Classical period, the vast majority of Greek poleis had populations of less than 3,000 and territories no more than a few hours” walk from the urban core. Given that, they asked, does it make sense to divide elements of Greek life into “city” and “country”? In a sense, the study of landscapes was seen as a way to redress perceived imbalances between this urban-rural division and the picture painted by the ancient sources of Roman Greece as a pale reflection of its Classical brilliance. In the years since, landscape studies have grown to include much more than archaeological field survey, but this tension between textual and archaeological narratives remains at the heart of understandings of rural Roman Greece.