This article is based on some walks in the Northern Megarid. Although my study of the terrain was far from comprehensive, the remains of a road, of towers beside the road, and of ancient settlements seem to justify the conclusion that a main road, perhaps the main road in classical times, from Boeotia to the Peloponnese passed through the Northern Megarid. The area has been little visited by travellers. Recently the forest cover of one part of the area was burnt, and this enabled me to see more than my predecessors had seen.

The long range of Mt. Cithaeron and its continuation eastwards, Mt. Pástra, form the main line dividing Boeotia from Megaris and Attica. The longest and the most difficult route over this barrier runs from Creusis to Aegosthena, keeping close to the coast of the Corinthian Gulf. The second and the next in difficulty departs from Plataea, ascends steeply to a col in the range and then drops less steeply on the Megarian side.

The long dagger is the most common type of copper object found in the tombs of the Early Bronze Age in Crete, perhaps because each man was buried with his dagger beside him. One hundred and sixty-one long daggers of Minoan manufacture have been discovered in Early Minoan deposits. That is rather more than one-third of all the E.M. copper objects yet found. Two-thirds of these daggers were found in or around the Mesara plain of southern Crete, and five of the blades were found in Cyprus. Only seven of the daggers were found in settlement sites, the rest came from tombs. The long daggers may be divided into fourteen major types.

For a number of reasons the time seems ripe for a fresh appraisal of the jewellery of the Early Iron Age in Greece, between 1100 and 700 B.C.

It is perhaps worth recalling, as a preliminary, the superlative excellence of Mycenaean jewellery, in which the arts of filigree, granulation, inlay, enamelling, and repoussé-work were carried to perfection. When the Mycenaean world finally collapsed about 1100 B.C. after a century of turmoil, it left a very different legacy. There was little time now to spare for the luxuries of life; and jewellery, where it existed at all, was simple in the extreme.

I shall be concerned in this paper with the re-emergence of high-quality jewellery in the post-Mycenaean world. The investigation will be restricted to Attica and Crete, for these districts are by far the most fruitful sources for our period.

Many vice-consuls of Britain's imperial past found archaeological work a welcome distraction from the tedium of their official duties in remote parts of the world. Some, indeed, like Charles Newton at Mytilene and George Dennis at Palermo, Benghazi, and Smyrna, regarded the excavation and study of the antiquities of the countries in which they were based as their prime duty. Thus, Frederick H. Crowe, a predecessor of Dennis at Benghazi, wrote the following letter to Lord John Russell, then Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs:

Bengazi 1 Sep. 1860.

My Lord,

I have the honour to report to your Lordship, that in the course of excavating at a place denominated by the Arabs ‘Soliman’, the site of the Ancient Greek Necropolis, situated four miles S.E. of the Town of Bengazi, I had the good fortune to discover at a distance of about 15 feet from the surface, a large vault built of solid masonry, and divided into 14 Compartments or rather Tombs.

Isolated tombs are known all round the site of Knossos, where they help to define the extent of the Minoan city, but the only considerable cemetery that had been found before last year was at Zafer Papoura, north of the Palace and between the Kairatos and the road to Herakleion. A solitary grave (the ‘Tomb of the Cow,’ a M.M. IIIb jar-burial) was accidentally discovered on the far side of the river, but search for other sepulchral remains in this region had produced nothing, though fragments of substantial buildings shewed that the town extended up the lower slopes of the eastern hills.

This article is the result of several months' study of the neolithic pottery of the Stratigraphical Museum at Knossos, which I undertook in the hope of adding more detail to the descriptions published by Sir Arthur Evans and Dr. D. Mackenzie. Evidence obtained from such a study is not, of course, so valuable as it would have been if these excavators themselves had had the opportunity to deal with their neolithic collections with the greater attention that they devoted, for obvious reasons, to the Minoan material. But it is hoped that the present account may make the results of their discoveries available for use in connection with future excavation of the site.

The presence of neolithic pottery at Knossos was realised in the first years of excavation, and received a certain amount of attention in summary and provisional reports, concerned as these were necessarily with the startling importance of what later came to be known as the Minoan levels. Evans understood at once the nature of the mound on which his ‘Mycenaean Palace’ stood, and made soundings to virgin soil at several different points. In dealing with the pottery he was assisted by Mackenzie, who made a careful analysis of the material from two Test Pits, and was able to recognise three stages within the neolithic period, an arrangement which was followed in the definitive publication. The somewhat later discovery of neolithic houses beneath the Central Court reinforced the conclusions already reached. Subsequent discussions of the material have been based on the work of Evans and Mackenzie rather than on independent observation, with the exception of some notes in an article by Professor V. G. Childe.

Of the many sites surveyed by Helen Waterhouse and R. Hope Simpson in Laconia one of the most outstanding is that of Ayios Stephanos (BSA lv (1960) 97–100). It is about 45 km. SSE. of Sparta and distant just under two km. from the sea (PLATE 39a). At one time it undoubtedly was a promontory jutting out into the sea, for in many parts of the Mediterranean the land has risen since Classical times. The site is a flat-topped hill, the habitable part of which covers an area of roughly 45,000 square metres. It is steep on the north and east. To the west it links up with the foothills of the Taygetus range. In recent years the hill has been used for pasturage, but at one time it was almost certainly cultivated and the plough has done a lot of damage to the underlying walls and burials.

Early copper axes from mainland Greece, whether flat or shaft-hole, are rare. Only four are attributable with more or less certainty to the Final Neolithic period: two from Sesklo, one from Alepotrypa and one from Pevkakia. There is one from Crete that was found in a Late Neolithic level at Knossos. Three others might belong to Early Bronze I: a flat axe each from Gona and Marathon Cave, and a unique hammer-axe from Levadia. The three Mainland hoards, from Eutresis, Thebes, and Petralona, containing shaft-hole and flat axes, have been assigned to the latter half of the Early Bronze Age.

In the winter months of A.D. 905–6 Arethas, Archbishop of Caesarea, unwillingly made the difficult journey from Constantinople to the Byzantine province of Hellas, central Greece. The official reason for this visit was to reconsecrate several churches which had been defiled and pillaged by raiders, probably Bulgars, but there was another reason why the vociferous archbishop should be removed from the capital. In September 905 Zoe, mistress of the Emperor Leo VI, had given birth to a child Constantine, Leo's first son and heir. While this event was joyfully celebrated by the entire court, it provoked dismay and alarm among ecclesiastics such as Arethas. For the emperor had already been married three times and to take a fourth wife was against the canons of the Orthodox Church.

This article concerns the House of Kadmos or ‘old palace’ in Boeotian Thebes, which was excavated by Keramopoullos between 1906 and 1929. It entails the study of the architecture within the Theban landscape and the context of other Mycenaean structures later unearthed in its vicinity, as well as a preliminary stratigraphic and chronological reexamination of available data. It is concluded that the House of Kadmos would have been a free-standing palatial building, but the reconstruction of a ‘typical’ tripartite megaron with a columned porch is questioned. A LH II construction date is not deemed impossible, but the basis on which it has been put forward is considered to be inadequate. On the other hand, an early LH III B1 destruction date seems very plausible on the basis of decorated pottery securely assigned to the destruction fill. Some groups of previously unpublished decorated pottery from the site do not suffice to clarify the destruction date, but seem to be in accord with this conclusion. Hopefully, the ongoing study of the ceramic assemblage will eventually cast more light on Theban chronology.

The Roman pottery recorded and discussed in this article was excavated at the theatre and stoa in Sparta under the Direction of G. B. Waywell and J. J. Wilkes. The largest group of material came from trench ST XV, excavated in the west parodos of the theatre in 1997 and 1998, while the second group of material was excavated in the west end of the stoa in 1991. The new groups of material studied and published in this article have built upon earlier work (D. Bailey on the stoa and J. Hayes on the theatre) to begin to develop a chronological typology for the Roman pottery of Sparta. The development of this pottery sequence has provided for the first time a solid basis for Roman ceramic studies in the area and opens new avenues for investigating broader economic, social and political issues.

The island of Kythera (Cerigo) has many well-preserved structures dating from the British protectorate (1815–64): the most striking of these are several stone-built school buildings constructed in 1825–6. Education in these schools was based on a British system, informed by evangelical religious principles that had gained popularity in England in the late eighteenth century, and known as the Lancastrian system after its founder, Joseph Lancaster. Using unpublished archival sources in both Britain and Kythera, this article focuses primarily on the colonial educational system on Cerigo, as embodied in the school buildings. The Cerigo schools are set in the context of socio-political events and ideas in the early nineteenth century: the phenomenon of the Lancastrian school movement, the impact of Protestant missions in the Mediterranean and the colonial initiative of public education in the Ionian Islands. The relationship between the British (officials and missionaries) and the islanders in the establishment and the initial operation of the schools is illustrated by a detailed discussion of teachers, schoolbooks, the number of schools and students, and data regarding the construction of the school buildings. The manifestation of that relationship is shown in the physical form of the British-built school buildings and their placement in the landscape. While the creation of the Cerigo schools may be viewed as a microcosm of British colonial and missionary involvement in the Ionian Islands, it can be demonstrated that subsequent changes in the function of the schools in the Colonial period reflected an increasing alignment with the ideologies of the developing nation-state of Greece.

In this article, the second in the series dealing with pottery found in the Citadel House excavations at Mycenae, I shall describe the nature and contents of the destruction deposit found immediately outside the South House (Citadel House area) on the north. The mass of broken pottery which lay on the built stone causeway leading from the Ramp House upwards to the northern corner of the South House confirms the division into two periods of the Late Helladic IIIB pottery from the Argolid. I have described and illustrated this in detail and compared it with other groups of L.H. IIIB pottery which have been published from Mycenae and from Tiryns.

We have attempted below to define three main phases in the development of the Late Helladic IIIC pottery of Lefkandi. The first two phases we have further subdivided into an early and late stage. We recognize the dangers of over-classification, principally in that it may obscure the main differences between each phase. In this case, however, the danger seemed worth the risk in that Lefkandi has produced unusually deep and well-stratified deposits of IIIC pottery, such as are unlikely to have accumulated or to have survived on most sites of this period. This is not, of course, to say that the stages which we believe to be recognizable at our site are necessarily valid elsewhere. But the extent to which they are generally applicable will appear only after they have first been defined and then tested against the finds from other excavations with stratified deposits of this period.

The pottery of the LH IIIB period has frequently been treated as if it were a homogeneous product, uniform throughout the Mycenaean area; and LH IIIB has been envisaged, by several scholars, as the period above all of the Mycenaean Koine Furumark, however, who considered the pottery of LH IIIA2 rather than LH IIIB to be “the Koine style par preference”, emphasised the degree of local development during LH IIIB in certain parts of the Mycenaean world, particularly in Cyprus and in Rhodes. Nevertheless, he regarded LH IIIB as “the period of the greatest Mycenaean expansion”, with the Argolid as the “political and cultural centre of the Aegean world”, and on the Mainland, where LH IIIB settlement material was scarce, particularly in areas other than the Argolid, a blanket definition of the pottery of this period was drawn mainly from tombs, over half of which were Argive. While recognising that some of his LH IIIB groups were stylistically later than others, Furumark left the period chronologically undivided.

The story of the borderline sanctuary of Artemis Limnatis forms an integral part of the history of ancient Laconia and Messenia. Since the discovery of the Volimnos inscriptions in 1835, many scholars have entered the still-continuing debate concerning the sanctuary's location, history and significance. In this article the available evidence for the Limnatis cult and history is presented and thoroughly discussed: the small finds, currently kept in the Kalamata Archaeological Museum, the inscriptions of the Kapsocherovoloussa chapel, the scattered spolia at Volimnos and their possible association with architectural structures of the sanctuary, the topography of the area in accordance with Inscriptiones Graecae V,1 1431 (Kolbe 1913, no. 1431) and the attested boundary stones discovered in an extensive survey along the ridge of Mount Taygetos, and finally the origin and nature of the Limnatis cult. This discussion is expected to further illuminate issues still unresolved, offering a chance to re-evaluate generally accepted arguments.

This entry in the Catalogue comes immediately after the Rhodian contingent under Tlepolemos, and immediately before Achilles' Myrmidons. None of the three leaders appears elsewhere, nor are any of their relatives mentioned elsewhere, with the exception, of course, of Herakles, grandfather of Pheidippos and Antiphos. Of the islands over which they rule, only Kos is mentioned again.

There can be no reason to doubt the identification of Syme, Nisyros, Krapathos, and Kasos, with the islands which still bear those names, apart from a slight and normal change in the case of Krapathos—Karpathos. By Κῶς Εὐρυπύλοιο πόλις is presumably meant a city on the site of the present Kos-town, called elsewhere Μερόπις. Thus the Delian Hymn to Apollo refers to Kos as πόλις Μερόπων ἀνθρώπων. This is borne out by the other references to Kos in the Iliad, for there it is given the epithet εὖ ναιομένην, which elsewhere seems to be applied to cities.

The problem of what Homer meant by νῆσοι Καλύδναι was already being discussed in Strabo's time. He says that the general opinion (φασί) was that νῆσοι Καλύδναι meant Kalymna and the islands near by, Kalymna perhaps being once called Καλύδνα, but that some said that Leros and Kalymna were meant, while Demetrios of Skepsis held that Καλύδναι was a plural similar to Ἀθῆναι or Θῆβαι. While there does not seem to be any good evidence that Kalymna (= Kalymnos) was alone ever called Καλύδνα or Καλύδναι, there is no doubt that the people of Kalymna and the adjacent islands—presumably Telendos and Pserimos, and possibly also Kalolimnos—were called Καλύδνιοι in the fifth century B.C.

This paper explores the role of waterways in shaping the settlement landscape of south-east Cyprus during the second millennium bc. Particular emphasis is placed on the proposed use of the Gialias river, in conjunction with overland portages, for transporting bulk commodities from the island's interior to the coast. The geopolitical characteristics of Alashiya, as known from eastern Mediterranean court correspondence, are considered with reference to adjacent riverine and maritime regions. A dominant trend of continuity in settlement and societal development is identified for south-east Cyprus as a whole throughout the period under review.

The fine white-slipped pottery decorated in a lively East Greek style which was first found in quantity at Naucratis in Egypt was soon dubbed ‘Naucratite’ and considered the local product of Greek craftsmen. Subsequent excavations on the island of Chios showed that the same pottery and the same techniques were known there from Late Geometric times, long before the Greek settlement at Naucratis, and more recent excavations there have made the Chian character of the pottery even clearer, and have carried the story on into Hellenistic times. The pottery was promptly therefore rechristened ‘Chian’. Dissenting voices have, however, been raised in support of the theory that Chian daughter-factories in Naucratis produced fine pottery for dedication there, particularly those vases embellished with inscriptions which had been painted before their firing and which named both dedicator and deity. This factor has complicated the issue far more than the Arkesilas Vase did the similar problem of ‘Cyrenaic’ and Laconian vases, which was neatly solved by the British excavations at Sparta. But there are also other complicating factors, some of which have not been openly discussed as yet, which it is my purpose to record here.

1. During a visit to Perachora in April 1975 a new fragment of the runnel or water channel running from the top of the deep shafts to the storage chambers was observed. It consists of a fragmentary block of the local hard limestone, with a partly preserved water-proof lining. It had evidently been ploughed up from the field immediately to the north of the easternmost deep shaft. The total original width of the block was 0·32 m. The original length is not preserved. It has now been taken to the Perachora museum.