Theotokou lies at the south-eastern corner of the Magnesian peninsula, a little to the north of the bay of Kato Georgi. The site itself is the seaward end of a narrow valley, where a small brook discharges into a little cove just to the north of a hill called Kastro (Fig. 1). Here there stands a small chapel built in 1807, and dedicated to the Virgin. In the walls of the chapel itself are several ancient blocks, and north and south of it traces of walls are visible. Immediately to the west is a large mass of ruins formerly covered with brushwood; round these stand six fragments of Doric columns, and a seventh lies in a cornfield some distance to the west: an eighth, which was seen here, has disappeared. This place, the traditional site of Sepias, was first visited by a local gentleman, Theódoros Zirghános.

In 1950 the Anastelosis Section of the Greek Archaeological Service began the restoration of the ‘Tomb of Clytemnestra’, Fig., Plate 35. In view of our previous researches on the tomb, Dr. Papademetriou and the Anastelosis Section invited us to observe the work and to collaborate by a careful examination of the threshold and other points. Dr. Papademetriou has already published an account of the work himself, and the following notes with the plan and photographs are offered as a supplement to what he has written. We are much indebted to him for his friendly help.

This paper looks at the period of the first regular use of pictorial vase painting in Crete: LM II–III A2 early. The focus is on Knossos, the major findspot for Minoan pictorial pottery of this distinct pre-destruction period. The shapes, motifs and overall character of Minoan pictorial pottery are discussed, as well as the extent of its influence on the earliest Mycenaean figure-style vase-painting.

The town of Amastra (anc. Amastris, med. Samastro), one of the most important of the ancient Greek colonies on the Euxine, and later a Genoese trading-post, lies on the neck and landward slopes of a steep peninsula forming a safe harbour on either side. The peninsula is connected by a bridge with an adjacent island, on which are a few houses still protected on the harbour side by the mediaeval town-wall. The bridge is defended on either side by a gate-tower, and the city proper and castle, which are on the peninsula, retain their lofty walls and towers, built of squared blocks evidently plundered from Roman ruins (Fig. 1). Despite this plundering and the recent construction of the new road (still unfinished in 1910) to Bartin, extensive ancient remains still survive above ground on the mainland opposite the town, notably the large Roman building of brick and opus reticulatum called the Bezestein, two columns of a temple or mausoleum, many built tombs, and considerable remains of masonry embankment and vaulting about the stream which debouches into the smaller (W.) harbour. Saving the change of ownership, the place has altered but little since Clavijo's description in 1404:—

‘The town of Samastro belongs to the Genoese, and is near the sea…. on a very high hill. Opposite this hill, but more inland, there is another on which the town is built; and from one hill to another there is a great arch, like a bridge, by which people pass, and it has two gates, one at each end.

Finds of the topshells Monodonta turbinata (Born 1780) and M. articulata Lamarck 1822 are discussed. ‘Rings’ made of Monodonta shells were used as rings or pendants

This article is the first of a series presenting the results of two seasons of excavation (2001 and 2002) at the Little Palace North site, Knossos. The excavation was aimed at the exploration of the exposed earth section directly north of the Little Palace, prior to the construction of a drystone wall which was to protect this section from further erosion. While limited in extent, the excavation provided an opportunity to increase our understanding of the layout of the LM and later town and, more generally, of the complex history of occupation of this area, which spans the period from at least the sixteenth century BC to the fourth century AD.

In regard to the early Greek periods, few architectural remains were encountered at the Little Palace North site. Instead, early Greek strata, covering all periods from Subminoan to Orientalizing, yielded evidence for various activities that took place outdoors. These activities included, in one area, the (enigmatic) use of large, clay-lined 'pans' and, in another, metal-working. The results add to our knowledge of the activities at early Greek Knossos and the spatial organization of the settlement.

The article offers a full discussion of the stratigraphy of the early Greek levels, the associated pottery, small finds, and archaeobotanical material.

Σε αυτό το άρθρο δημοσιεύονται – για πρώτη φορά – τα αποτελέσματα των ανασκαφών (2001 και 2002) στην περιοχή βόρεια του Μικρού Ανακτόρου στην Κνωσό. Σκοπός της ανασκαφής ήταν να ερευνηθεί η αρχαιολογική τομή που βρίσκεται αμέσως βόρεια του Μικρού Ανακτόρου, προτού ανεγερθεί ξερολιθιά με σκοπό να προστατευθεί η τομή από περεταίρω διάβρωση. Παρόλο που ήχαν περιορισμένη σε έκταση, η ανασκαφή μας έδωσε την δυνατότητα να καταλάβουμε καλύτερα την δομή της Υστερομινωικής και υστερότερης πόλης, ιδιαίτερα την πολύπλοκη ιστορία της κατοίκησης της περιοχής από το 160 αιώνα π.Χ. μεχρι και τον 40 αιώνα μ.Χ.

Σχετικά με την πρώιμη Ελληνική εποχή, ελάχιστα οικοδομικά λείψανα βρέθηκαν στην περιοχή βόρεια του Μικρού Ανακτόρου. Παρόλα αυτά, τα αρχαιολογικά στρώματα των πρώιμων Ελληνικών χρόνων καλύπτουν από την Υπομινωική μέχρι την Ανατολίζουσα περίοδο, παρουσιάζοντας ενδείξεις για διαφορες δραστηριότητες οι οποίες ελάμβαναν μέρος σε εξωτερικούς χώρους. Οι δραστηριότητες αυτές συμπεριλάμβαναν την αινυγματική χρήση μεγάλων “τηγανιών” με πήλινη επικαλυψη, όπως και μεταλλουργία. Τα αποτελέσματα προσθέτουν στις γνώσεις μας για τις δραστηριότητες στην πρώιμη Ελληνική Κνωσό αλλά και για τη χωροταξία του οικισμού. Το άρθρο αυτό προσφέρει την πλήρη ανάλυση της στρωματογραφίας, της κεραμεικής, των μικροευρημάτων και του αρχαιοβοτανολογικού υλικού των πρώιμων Ελληνικών χρόνων.

The sickle, as attribute of Kronos, was considered by certain scholars to be the sickle with which the corn is reaped, and this would be a reliable argument for the opinion that Kronos was from of old a god of the harvest. Recently W. Staudacher has advanced the opinion that the harpe, as the Greek word is, is a sickle-shaped sword of Oriental origin, and uses this as an argument for deriving the myth of the separation of Heaven and Earth from the Orient; but he has not succeeded in proving his thesis. I have expressed doubt that the harpe of Kronos was a sickle, and said that it may have been a sword, but I have also called attention to the fact that the harpe is said by Hesiod to be provided with sharp teeth, being reminded of certain implements from the Neolithic Age in which sharp chips of flint are inserted in a stick of bone or wood, as in e.g. harpoons.

George Finlay died at the age of seventy-five on 24 January a hundred years ago and I am honoured to pay tribute to this distinguished Scottish scholar and philhellene on the occasion of his centenary. It is indeed fitting that this should take place in the School which possesses many of his books and papers.

It might well be asked why there has as yet—to the best of my knowledge—been no full biography of Finlay. A glance at the available material may suggest the answer. What are usually known as the Finlay Papers housed in the British School comprise a formidable collection. Perhaps the best-known items are the so-called Journals. They are in part genuine journals in the sense of a day to day record, particularly of Finlay's experiences when travelling round the Aegean, or in Turkey, or on a visit to Scotland, journeying via Malta and France or Switzerland.

Seventeen pottery sherds from the seventh century BC pottery kiln uncovered at Knossos in 1993 were analysed by neutron activation at N.C.S.R. Demokritos. Fifteen of the seventeen sherds form an extremely homogeneous chemical group whose composition parallels Late Minoan I and Classical/Hellenistic pottery from Knossos. The two chemically different samples are also physically different, being much coarser and more severely burned.

The following account is practically identical with section (a) of my Report to the Cretan Committee of the British Association (cf. Reports, Section H, 1903, Southport meeting). On the 26th March, 1903, the day of my arrival at Palaikastro, I commenced work on the ossuary discovered and partially excavated in the preceding year (cf. Report by R. C. Bosanquet, in Man, 1902). The work consisted in exposing the crania in the several compartments of that enclosure, and I soon found that the only reliable method of obtaining satisfactory cranial measurements was to clear away the surrounding earth from each skull and to measure while the specimen was still in situ. Subsequently, each skull (to the number of about thirty) was carefully removed, and then, moistened paper having been spread over and around it, a covering of plaster of Paris was finally applied: in this way it was hoped to render the skulls less liable to destruction in the transit to Candia or to such other destination as might be determined upon.

The excavations of 1908 more than fulfilled expectations in the amount of light that was shed on the later history of the Spartan pottery, so that it is now possible to write an account of the development and decline of the Laconian fabric; which account, beginning in the ninth or tenth century, ends with the latter half of the fourth, when the pottery loses its local characteristics in the various styles that appear to have been common to the whole Greek world during the last three centuries before the Christian Era.

By the kindness of the Editor of the Annual I am allowed to append to Dr. Schäfer's paper a brief note on two monuments representing likna which came to my knowledge too late for publication in my last article in the Hellenic Journal on the Mystica Vannus lacchi.

Dr. Schäfer's paper is naturally to me of great interestand importance. Egypt has yielded what would have been vainly sought for in Greece, namely an actual ancient liknon of precisely the shape so far evidenced only by representations in ancient art and by modern specimens. Mr. Bosanquet wrote to me last year from Berlin to tell me of the existence of such a liknon; and its publication by Dr. Schäfer in Fig. 15 of his paper makes further comment unnecessary.

When I was at Candia in the autumn of 1913, Dr. Hatzidakis, the Ephor of Antiquities, told me that a report had reached him of a Minoan site near the village of Pláti in the plain of Lasithi, and suggested that the School should apply for a permit to excavate it. Before leaving Crete I made a preliminary inspection of the site, and the prospects seemed to justify the School in undertaking the work. The local account was that a woman had had a dream that by digging in a certain place a church bell would be found. The villagers accordingly dug a hole in the place indicated, and found not a bell but an early piece of wall and some fragments of obsidian. A report of the discovery was made to the authorities by the scholarch of Tsermiádo, the chief village of Lasithi, and it was this document to which Dr. Hatzidakis called my attention.

The usual kindness of the Cretan authorities produced the required permit, and by the 25th of April the site had been measured by the government engineer in accordance with the law now in force, and we were able to begin the work. This lasted for exactly a month, until the 25th of May, the number of men employed being for the most part about thirty, and resulted in the discovery of the Minoan settlement described in the second section of this report. The party consisted of Messrs. J. P. Droop, R. M. Heath, and M. L. W. Laistner with the Director in charge throughout.

On the east slope of Lower Gypsades hill, about 100 metres west of the Temple Tomb, a chamber tomb came to light in August 1958, when a cutting for a new water pipe was driven through the area (A in Plate 9 a). In the course of this operation, part of a plain larnax (iii) was sliced off, and much earth removed from the west end of the collapsed chamber: at no point, however, had the municipal workmen penetrated to the tomb floor.

The chamber was approached by a sloping dromos (Plate 9 a: length 2·80 metres; max. width 1 metre), roughly cut into the natural kouskouras rock: its walls were approximately perpendicular. Although the gradient varied a good deal, there was no suggestion of a stairway.

The blocking wall was found in good condition. Of especial interest were the numerous fragments of larnakes that had been built into its fabric: some of them could be recognized as belonging to each of the three fragmentary larnakes (i, ii, v) whose scattered pieces were found below and around the two undisturbed burials in the chamber (iii, iv). We may thus distinguish two periods in the history of the tomb: larnakes i, ii, and v were evidently smashed up in order to make room for iv and iii, which must have been deposited in that order. The debris of v was found under iv, with a few adult bones in its wreckage. Part of i lay on the floor near the south-west corner, where two plain vases (2, 3) were found in situ, hence, also, came most of the fragments of the fine L.M. IIIA 2 stirrup vase (1), although its other pieces were scattered all over the floor of the tomb. This small group of offerings may belong to the disturbed adult skeleton, whose skull lay up against the lower edge of iii. Curiously, some fragments of i and ii were also found above the broken lid of iv (Plate 9 b): perhaps the lid of the later larnax was accidentally smashed at the time of the funeral, in which case the debris from earlier burials could have been piled up above it, as a rough and ready means of protection.

This paper draws attention to the potential for recognizing exported Attic Protogeometric pottery by macroscopic characteristics of its fabric, whose salient features are described. The utility of these criteria are tested on a group of pottery from Asine in the Argolis whose Attic origin was not recognized in the original publication. A brief survey of the distribution of exported Attic Protogeometric pottery shows it to occur mainly in the southern Aegean, with notable concentrations at Lefkandi, Aigina, Asine and Knossos. A list of exports is appended to this survey.

This article reconsiders from a methodological point of view some of the ways in which the ancient Macedonians and their culture have been assessed by recent historians. It is inspired by Professor E. N. Borza's book on this issue, where archaeological material is widely used in ways which do not always accord with the data or their interpretation. It has to be noted that the article is focused only on the evidence deriving from Vergina, a site of which the author has a direct knowledge, due to participation in its archaeological research over a long period.

In an article on ‘The Greek Numeral Notation’ published in this Annual, xviii. 98 ff., I restricted myself to a discussion of those systems which compose the so-called ‘acrophonic’ group, promising for some future occasion an article dealing with the second, or ‘alphabetic,’ group of numeral systems. This promise has not been forgotten, though the greatness of the undertaking and the lack of adequate leisure have led to delay in its fulfilment; I have, however, collected considerable materials and hope before long to prepare them for publication. Meanwhile, the accession of fresh evidence relative to the acrophonic numerals, while it does not appear to me to invalidate my main conclusions, calls for the addition of a few notes to my previous article with a view of bringing it up to date and rendering it less incomplete.

It is the aim of this note to publish, as soon as possible after its discovery, a single kernos found in the Laureion. The significance of the piece is that it is another example of an uncommon type of pot recently studied and thought to be in effect confined, in Greece, to Eleusis and Athens— apart from one lone stray also found somewhere in that same Laureion district. A further interest is that both Laureion kernoi came from mining sites, but whereas the first was a surface find from a slag heap, the new kernos was found in the course of excavations, in a closed archaeological context.

The following abbreviations have been used, in addition to those already used in the Annual.

Arias. P. E. Arias, Il teatro greco fuori di Atene, Firenze, 1934.

Bieber, Denkmäler. Margarete Bieber, Denkmäler zum Theaterwesen, Berlin and Leipzig, 1920.

Bieber, H. T. Id., History of the Greek and Roman Theater, Princeton, 1939.

Bulle. H. Bulle, Untersuchungen an griechischen Theatern, München, 1928.

D-R. W. Dörpfeld and E. Reisch, Das griechische Theater, Athens, 1896.

Defrasse. A. Defrasse and H. Lechat, Epidaure, Paris, 1895.

Fiechter, A I, A III. E. Fiechter, Das Dionysostheater in Athen, I, III (Antike griech. Theatergebäude, Stuttgart, 1930–37).

Fiechter, Eretria. Id., Das Theater in Eretria (same series; similarly Fiechter, Megalopolis, Oropos, Sikyon).

Guide Bleu. Guide Bleu, La Grèce, 1935 ed.

Thera. F. Hiller von Gärtringen, Thera, 1899–1902.

Thanks are due to the editors, and to Mr. A. M. Woodward (on the subject of the theatre at Sparta), for their kind help and criticism.

This article is intended to form a supplement to The Greek Theatre Cavea in BSA XLIII, 125 ff. In the case of the theatre of Dionysus at Athens a detailed description is not necessary, as the works of Fiechter and Pickard-Cambridge cover nearly all the ground; comment is therefore confined to measurements of seats, etc. Theatres visited in Greece and the Aegean only are included.