The archaeological evidence for the sack of Smyrna is considered, together with later material. It is argued that this confirms a date for the sack around 600 BC, early in Alyattes' reign.

L.H. IIIB 2 has until recently been ill-served in archaeological publication, for two reasons. Firstly it does not seem to have been the custom in this period in mainland Greece to put much pottery in tombs. Secondly at settlement sites the period ended in a vast destruction which was preceded by either evacuation or plundering. This resulted in debris levels containing a mass of sherd material (often of earlier periods) but few restorable pot,s and thus of no interest to early excavators. Until 1966 practically the only L.H. IIIB 2 material of settlement type readily available for comparison was that from Schliemann's excavations at Mycenae illustrated in Mykenische Vasen, and the sherds from the same group in the British Museum Catalogue.

The discovery at Tiryns in 1957 of deep and extensive debris of this period (which has now been published in outline) concentrated attention on the period and has enabled some studies of historical importance to be made.

The recognition of Plato by the Arab philosophers, and consequently by the Seljouks of Roum, has long been the accepted explanation of the fact that his name is popularly associated with a remarkable spring (Eflatoun Bounari = Plato's spring) with ‘Hittite’ ruins some fifty miles west of Konia, the Seljouk capital, and with a spring at Konia itself: the connection has not hitherto been made clear. Stray references to Plato in the description of this part of Asia Minor by the Turkish geographer Hadji Khalfa (1648) seem to throw some fresh light on the subject.

These references are three in number. The first records the existence of a ‘tomb of Plato the divine’ in the citadel at Konia. This is also mentioned earlier by the thirteenth-century geographer Yakut, one of Hadji Khalfa's acknowledged sources: Yakut adds that the tomb was ‘in the church by the mosque.’

In recent articles the present writer has used the evidence of brickstamps in proposing new dates for the walls of Thessaloniki, for the mosaics of the second phase of the Rotunda (now dedicated to St. George), and for the Byzantine palace. In each case, reference was made to only two or three examples, and it is with a view to reinforcing and developing the arguments already expressed that all the published fifth-century brickstamps recognizable as such are assembled here (with the addition of some unpublished examples).

In 1981 an unplundered Mycenaean chamber tomb was excavated at Krini NW of Patras. Two separate layers of burials were found in the chamber, and its use is dated from LH III A to the middle of LH III C. The LH III C warrior's burial is of particular interest. It was furnished with a bronze Naue II sword, which has preserved in good condition its scabbard, made of wood and leather and decorated with bronze strips and studs. The warrior's burial and its furnishings are studied here in relation to the other LH III C warrior burials known from the Patras region, and their significance is discussed. The analysis of the pottery found in the tomb gives evidence for the existence and dating of local pottery workshops active in the region.

Last year's report contained an account of the excavation of the building on the hills to the east of the Eurotas, which has been identified with the Menelaion, the shrine of Menelaos and Helen mentioned by Herodotus and Pausanias. Besides the numerous archaic objects which were then published, this work produced a few sherds of Mycenaean pottery and fragments of Mycenaean terracottas, always at a lower level than the deposits of Laconian and Geometric ware. A further clue was afforded by a Mycenaean house, which was found by a trial-pit on the eastern peak of the hill, and Tsountas' report that Mycenaean sherds were to be found on the surface in the neighbouring fields was also verified.

In the context of our ongoing work on the new corpus of Theban inscriptions (IG VII2, 4), we had the opportunity to study the famous inscription that records the contributions for the refoundation of Thebes after 315 bc. The inscription consists of two fragments, the first of which has been known since the nineteenth century, whereas the second was published very recently by Professor Buraselis. Following Buraselis’ publication, the two fragments were physically joined in the Archaeological Museum of Thebes, where the inscription is currently on display. Our article provides the first ever full epigraphic edition of both fragments after autopsy. It is accompanied by detailed epigraphic notes, new supplements, apparatus criticus and a full historical analysis. By combining the study of abundant literary and epigraphic sources, we have attempted to place the inscription in its historical context, correcting certain earlier scholarly assumptions, making new suggestions about the motivations of the numerous contributors, and examining the modalities of the refoundation of Thebes.

This article focuses on a recent find from the archaeological site of Vergina, which is identified as the old capital of the Macedonian kingdom, Aegae. In the surroundings of a sanctuary three burials were discovered with outstanding components. One of them, a gold oak wreath, constitutes the object of investigation. At the outset of the study the excavation site and the data of the discovery of the burials are outlined. Then the wreath is analytically presented in terms of typology, technology, craftsmanship and style. In order to incorporate it in a network of precious artefacts, the other four oak wreaths found in Macedonia and dated to the fourth century bc are described and all of them are compared in the search for similarities or differences. Through this procedure three of them, all from Vergina, emerge as belonging to the same artistic tradition and possibly the same place of production.

Then the issue of different contexts is addressed. First of all, the burial in question and the particularities of the other two burials with oak wreaths from Vergina are examined, resulting in the articulation of a pattern. The next step comprises a general sketch of the meaning of wreaths in antiquity both in life and in death, while a subsequent brief consideration of funerary assemblages from the same period and region lays emphasis on the symbolic significance of these head ornaments in their contexts. Attention is also drawn to the plant that the wreath imitates, which is connected to Zeus. In this framework the oldest known oak wreath, that of ‘Philip II’, is evaluated mainly by examining politics as reflected on coinage. The power of such symbols as applied to other members of the same family is put forward. Another level of approach, the evaluation of the wider territorial context, offers insights into the decision to deposit the burial in the area of an intra muros sanctuary in the old and venerated capital of the kingdom.

When the results of the study are combined, a working hypothesis emerges that would consider the burial containing the gold wreath as connected to a member of the ruling family. Research turns to the literary evidence and from this it appears that there is a possibility that the burial is that of the illegitimate murdered son of Alexander the Great.

The concluding section refers briefly to episodes in the cultural biography of the wreath. In the meantime, until further and holistic study of the three burials and the construction where they were discovered is carried out, the gold oak wreath forms part of exhibitions on various themes as a representative of the assemblages.

The canal dug by Xerxes across the Mount Athos peninsula in preparation for his invasion of Greece is an important but little-known monument. Geophysical and topographical investigations begun in 1991–2 now suggest that its central section across high ground ran along a deep trench. Its features elsewhere remain to be determined.

It is argued that Byzantine manuscript illustrations to Hesiod's eighth-century BC poem offer realistic evidence for the appearance and function of common Medieval agricultural implements, of which there is little other record. Fourteen manuscripts illustrated from the tenth to sixteenth centuries AD are analysed in the Table on p. 67. In them seventeen implements not named in the text may be regarded as contemporary Medieval pictures, which may also be true of the six implements which Hesiod describes, for traditional textual or arthistorical rules hardly apply to these rustic drawings. Using the methodology of K. D. White's studies of Roman farming, other pictorial, literary, documentary, and the scanty archaeological evidence, together with that of survivals, is applied to these twenty-three implements alone. Conclusions are that the Byzantines may have introduced an eliktrin spade-fork, and possibly a wheel structure, but the article must be read within the context of Roman, Western Medieval and later Mediterranean studies of technology and means of peasant production, for which it offers only a first step in the largely unexplored Byzantine field.

Charred plant remains of middle neolithic to middle bronze age date indicate the processing for storage or consumption of emmer (Triticum dicoccum), hulled six-row barley (Hordeum vulgare), bitter vetch (Vicia ervilia) and acorns (Quercus sp.). Samples of emmer, barley, and bitter vetch from an early bronze age destruction level are valuable evidence for economic diversification at a household level.

The thirteenth-to-sixteenth-century (“Venetian”) defended settlement of Kephalos on the island of Paros was surveyed by the Cyclades Research Project (CY.RE.P.). This article offers an archaeological case-study of the kastro by examining and interpreting its medieval material remains (defensive walls, chapels, cisterns, domestic structures and surface potsherds). Moreover, on the basis of combined information from written sources and comparable building projects in late medieval Italy and the Latin-dominated Levant, more light can be shed on aspects of daily life in the Aegean. Archaeological evidence suggests that the first phase of Kephalos could be placed in the later thirteenth century but it was extended with the addition of an outer defensive wall in the late fourteenth century and was inhabited until the legendary besiege of the corsair Barbarossa in 1537. Domestic remains within the kastro suggest that the site must have been densely built, housing a large number of peasants in single-roomed two-storey houses. Architectural remains and ceramic finds on the highest point of the site testify to the existence of a strong Catholic/upper class element on the most prominent portion of the kastro, reserved for the Latin lords and their agricultural produce. Extensive survey (by CY.RE.P.) in the valley below Kephalos has shown that a number of contemporary satellite settlements existed and functioned around the kastro, suggesting an agriculturally intensified use of the rural landscape. Additionally, the study and interpretation of the surface ceramic finds offer a window to late medieval living standards and food preferences in the Aegean

Technological and typological studies of the chipped-stone industries of Palaeolithic Greece have hitherto been founded upon thorough descriptions of the morphological attributes of artefacts. This article departs from this tradition to examine, by means of refitting, the technology that created a group of 1691 lithic artefacts at Upper Palaeolithic Kastritsa. Refitting seeks to reconstruct individual reduction sequences by making connections between artefacts that are the results of successive steps in lithic production, thereby revealing more about the biographies of those artefacts. This approach, although extremely valuable, is not universally applicable because it is time-consuming and works only if the artefacts it examines have been retrieved from undisturbed contexts. Kastritsa's industry, however, lends itself to this sort of analysis thanks to the site's generally good spatial and temporal integrity. Attention is focused on layer 12 (in the western part of the rockshelter), a layer that has, amongst other features, yielded two sets of postholes. This evidence of habitation structures of this sort is unique in the Upper Palaeolithic record of south-east Europe. The analysis shows that this layer contains the greatest percentage of refitting specimens so far recorded at Kastritsa and makes a number of observations concerning the technological decisions taken by the knappers who worked there. It also suggests that specialised knapping and transformation activities probably took place in this part of the camp.

The recently reaffirmed identifications of Millawanda (= Miletos) and Apasa (= Ephesos) in the Hittite archives also confirm that interaction between Ahhiyawa and the Hittites was mainly in South-West Anatolia. Since Ahhiyawa was ‘across the sea’ from there, it is now shown to have been one of the ‘kingdoms’ of Mycenaean Greece. The Dodecanese Islands have been proposed, where a population increase may have been accompanied by immigration from the Argolid. But, even if combined with part of the Anatolian mainland opposite, the Dodecanese would not have been sufficiently important, since at least one king of Ahhiyawa was addressed as an equal by a Hittite Great King. Of the other suggested identifications, only Mycenae possessed the power and international status indicated. The Dodecanese seem marked as ‘the islands’, mentioned in the Hittite texts both as belonging to Ahhiyawa and as a haven for persons fleeing Hittite retribution.

Had I been aware, when I published the reconstruction of the great group of Damophon at Lycosura in volume xiii. of this Annual, that there was even then lying under lock and key in the National Museum of Athens a coin bearing on its reverse a representation of that very group, such misgivings as I had about the correctness of my reconstruction would have been greatly intensified.

The lucky re-discovery of this coin (Fig. 1) and its publication by M. Staïs in the last number of the Journal International d'Archéologie Numismatique afford an embarrassing opportunity for testing the value of the reconstruction, in which M. Staïs has treated me with great consideration. Before discussing his analysis of the coin, I should like to express to him my gratitude for acquainting me so promptly with its discovery and providing me with a cast.

This paper is a summary of the results of a workshop held at Knossos in August 1992. The aims of the workshop were to examine the most coherent and reliable deposits, place them in a chronological sequence, and decide on common terminologies and definitions. This brief paper provides a framework and serves as a common introduction to various detailed studies of Knossian EM–MM pottery by the various authors which have appeared, are in press, or are forthcoming.

This is a report of an architectural survey of the site of Praisos in E. Crete, undertaken in 1992. A plan of ancient and modern features was produced, which included remains surviving above ground such as ancient walls, rockcuttings, cut blocks, and spolia, together with more detailed plans of features and concentrations of features. This documentation has been supplemented with photographs, elevation drawings, and descriptions of selected features, especially rock-cuttings. Rock-cut features, common on many Cretan sites, have rarely been described in detail or discussed properly; the article seeks to remedy this state of affairs to some extent. The remains seem to date to the Minoan, archaic, and late classical–hellenistic periods, particularly the last. Some historical conclusions are drawn.

While travelling in Turkey in 1951 as Wilson Fellow of the University of Aberdeen, I visited Eskişehir (Dorylaion) and a number of villages in that area. In the interval between Cox and Cameron's exhaustive survey of that district and my own visit, a considerable amount of new material has come to light, as is generally the case in Anatolia. The following inscriptions are of some interest:

1. Eskişehir, Museum Depôt Inv. no. 186. Grey marble bomos with acroteria; slightly damaged, and badly weathered at one point in the inscribed area. Mouldings above and below. In pediment, part of an eagle, probably the eagle of Zeus; see L. Robert, RevPhil XIII (1939), 203 f.

H. (visible) 1·1 m.; W. 0·49 m., (shaft) 0·36 m.; Th. 0·325 m. Letters 0·035 m. to 0·048 m.; average 0·037 m., with heavy apices and ligatures.

Photograph of squeeze, Fig.

The reference to Zeus Euphranor is new.

Among the hunting scenes that the Aegean iconography of the second millennium bc offers us, representations related to bird hunting seem to be absent. Newer information has emerged, however, from the restoration of the frescoes from Xeste 3 in the Late Cycladic I / Late Minoan IA settlement of Akrotiri on Thera. On the first floor of Xeste 3, a community sanctuary whose function has been connected with initiation rites, the Great Goddess of Nature (the Potnia) was depicted appearing among young crocus gatherers, possibly during a religious festival related to the regeneration of nature. Two pairs of mature women with sumptuous dress and elaborate jewellery, carrying lilies, wild roses and crocuses as offerings to the Goddess, were rendered on the walls of a corridor that led into the room where the seated Potnia is located. Among the women in the corridor is one holding a sheaf of white lilies and bearing a net pattern with small blue birds on her upper arms. The net has been viewed as a bodice with embroidered miniature swallows. However, specific details of the net pattern indicate the depiction of a real net with captured small, possibly migratory, birds, to be offered to the Potnia. The subject of trapping birds with a net perhaps refers to a ritual act that would have taken place during an autumn or spring festival, given that the trapping of migratory birds takes place during these two transitional seasons. The particular importance and symbolic value of the subject, which enriches the Aegean sacred iconography, is also suggested by the representation of a net with a captured bird on a Late Minoan IB sealing from Agia Triada, which comes from the bezel of a signet ring, apparently made of gold, as well as the rendering of what is possibly a net on the back of a Late Minoan IIIA2 clay male figurine holding a bird, found on the bench in the Shrine of the Double Axes in Knossos.

The generally accepted date (377/6) of the earliest Athenian naval inventory of the fourth century B.C., IG II2 1604, rests upon an unsafe restoration and several improbable assumptions. The fact that a Secretary 377/6 is named as trierarch on 1604 casts severe doubt on the accepted date. Indeed, the small number of allotted triremes on 1604 strongly suggests a date before the outbreak of war in 378. The record on 1604 of an Athenian trireme borrowed by the Chian Antimachos, which is easily associated with the negotiations at the very foundation of the Athenian Confederacy, seems to date 1604 to 379/8. Thus it is unlikely that the new series of inventories began only in 378/7 as a consequence of that foundation; the absence from the Navy Lists of outstanding debts datable before 378/7 indicates perhaps a successful collection of naval debts in that year. The existence of a substantial number of newly constructed triremes on 1604 discredits the view that the Peace of 387/6 banned all naval activity in Greece. New readings on Tod 117 demonstrate that Athens continued to deploy ships during the Peace. Its terms, which were not particularly harsh on Athens, more closely resembled those rejected in 392, which did allow trireme-building, than those of 371 and later. Anyhow these later Koinai Eirenai, like the Peace of Antalcidas, prohibited, not all military activity, but only warfare among the signatory states.