Tomb XVIII in the Gypsades cemetery, south of the Knossos Palace, was excavated by Sinclair Hood, George Huxley, and Nancy Sandars in 1955 and published in 1959.1

The main chamber contained at least 9 burials. Only a handful of objects were found associated with these burials: a small bronze bead with the skull of Skeleton II, 4 small, plain vessels with the skull of Skeleton III, silver ear-rings with Skeleton IV, a lentoid sealstone of hammered silver or meteorite with Burial VII, and a small bronze link with Burial VIII.

This report describes the excavation of two pits which had been dug into the natural rock, apparently in connection with the storage and perhaps original manufacture of plaster, in the space named after them the ‘Room of the Plaster Pits’. The pits were filled and covered in LM II, and the evidence for their date helps to bring the history of this part of the palace into clearer focus. The Room of the Plaster Pits may be the same as the elusive Lapidary's Workshop described by Evans in his Knossos report for 1901. It is suggested that the lack of observed floors or blocking walls in doorways separating deposits in this area makes it difficult to divide the vases assigned to LM III B here from tablets and seal impressions involved in the final destruction of the palace.

The publication of Sheila Adam's lively and closely argued study of the technique of Greek sculpture has aroused considerable controversy; not the least disputed of her views was that the running drill, ‘the only major technical change which occurs in Greek sculpture of the Classical Period’, was not introduced until the second quarter of the fourth century B.C., a full seventy years or more after Blümel's date for its invention. Although such examination as I have been able to make of extant Greek originals from this period suggests to me that Adam was correct in concluding that the tool was not in general use until after c. 370, there does seem to be some evidence that sculptors were experimenting with it for about twenty to thirty years beforehand.

This article is a continuation of that published in BSA lvii. 46–74, and the same principles have been followed in editing the present series of fragments. The three sections deal with the tablets found during excavations at Knossos in 1961, two small fragments preserved in the British Museum but hitherto unrecorded, and a collection of pieces in Iraklion which had previously been overlooked or thought unworthy of publication. The new numbers assigned run from 8210 to 8332.

The system of transcription has been slightly modified to conform to the latest version of the ‘Wingspread Convention’ dated 1962 and published by Professor E. L. Bennett as a supplement to Nestor. The use of hyphens between groups of letters representing Mycenaean signs has been continued, as allowing in some cases a more accurate account to be given of the state of the text. The expansions of the abbreviated names of the ideograms will be found in the index of ideographic signs on p. 88. The comma has been used as the transcription of the word-divider, as it seems inadequate, especially in fragmentary texts, to leave it to be inferred merely from the spacing.

In the summer of 1972, while participating in the excavation of the Royal Road South at Knossos under the direction of Professor Peter Warren now at Bristol University, I undertook a limited examination of certain boxes in the Stratigraphical Museum in the reasonable hope of supplementing John Betts's earlier discovery of five sealstones and sixty-six sealings that could be related to the Palace. The boxes I examined all carry the label of ‘Evans's Personal Property’, and contain an extraordinary number of faience, clay, and stone objects, all with provenance unknown, but many, if not all, surely from Evans's own excavations. The box containing the seals was marked ‘Box 1878, Evans's Material’.

The probable extent of the Late Cycladic town at Akrotiri is discussed, and the original geographical setting reconstructed. The principles on which the town and its buildings were constructed are elucidated; emphasizing the compact accumulation of rooms and other units of space. Buildings are generally multi-storied, and there is no evidence for courtyards or light walls within them. Access is generally limited to a single entrance, lighting and ventilation are provided by windows. Drainage systems are provided. The three types of streets: main streets, narrow alleys, and blind alleys are described, and the factors behind their arrangement and form discussed. Orientation of the streets is approximately north to south and east to west. The phenomenon of dentation in the construction of walls is discussed. The conclusion is that the town plan reflects a building operation based on a well-organized community with strong traditions and unwritten laws.

In a note on the Argive festival of the Hybristika I mentioned the diviners of Skythia as examples of that strange phenomenon familiar among many savage peoples, the magician who dresses as a woman. As the θήλεα νοῦσος has been somewhat of a crux to Herodotean scholars, I may perhaps be allowed to develop the point a little more at length.

It has usually been suggested that the θήλεα νοῦσος must be explained either as a vice, or as a bodily disease, or as a mental affliction. None of these theories, however, accounts for all the features of the evidence which we possess, and can only be tortured into conformity by the Procrustean ingenuity of the scholar. Those, for example, who explain the θήλεα νοῦσος as a vice, have further to show why those who are afflicted with it form a definite class, why they are connected especially with Askalon, and why they are magicians.

The Cyclopean Terrace Building lies to the north-west of the Lion Gate on the northern end of the Panagia Ridge and faces almost due west across the valley of the Kephissos and modern main road from Corinth to Argos. It lies just below the 200 m. contour line, and one terrace below the houses excavated in 1950–51 by Dr. Papadimitriou and Mr. Petsas to the east at the same end of the ridge. The area contains a complex of buildings, both successive and contemporary, and in view of the discovery of structures both to the south-west and, by the Greek Archaeological Service, to the north-east it is likely that this whole slope was covered by a portion of the outer town of Mycenae. This report will deal only with the structure to which the name Cyclopean Terrace Building was originally given, the so-called ‘North Megaron’, supported by the heavy main terrace wall.

The excavation of this structure was begun in 1923. The main terrace wall was cleared and two L.H. IIIC burials discovered in the top of the fill in the south room. In 1950 it was decided to attempt to clear this building entirely in an endeavour to find out its date and purpose. The clearing was not, however, substantially completed until the close of the 1953 excavation season, and this report presents the available evidence for the date as determined by the pottery found beneath the building; the purpose is still a matter for study, though various tentative conclusions can be put forward.

Among the local finds displayed in the Museum of Antiquities at the Piraeus are six Roman portraits, all of Pentelic marble and all unrestored. Two of them, a colossal head of Trajan (no. 270) and a colossal statue of Balbinus (no. 278), have already been fully edited. But according to the Director of the Piraeus Museum, Dr. Threpsiades, and to the best of the present writer's knowledge, of the other portraits two are still unpublished, two described without any illustration; and it is with Dr. Threpsiades' kind permission that all four are published here.

I. No. E 4. Head of Claudius(Plate 67a–b)

Total height: 48 cm.

Height from crown of head to bottom of chin: 26 cm.

Width across at greatest extent: 20 cm.

Width from back to front at greatest extent: 24 cm.

The sculpture depicts the head and neck, slightly over life-size, of an elderly man, in whom we can immediately recognize the Emperor Claudius. At the base of the neck is a rounded ‘tenon’, designed for insertion into a cavity between the shoulders of the now vanished body of a full-length statue. Claudius' face has sustained considerable damage. The nose has practically gone, only part of the side, and the hollow interior, of the right nostril remaining. The chin, lips, and right ear are bruised, the brow is marred by several abrasures, and the left ear is lost.

Small pockets of neolithic levels were sampled during the 1987 investigation of the Throne Room System in the palace of Knossos. The limited stratigraphic evidence is here presented, as well as sections concerning the pottery, small finds, and animal bones. The most interesting point to emerge concerns the presence of Final Neolithic characteristics in the ceramic evidence that will help towards formulating an appreciation of that elusive period at Knossos.

The large pictorial jug published here (Plate 12 a-d) was discovered in 1966 in a plundered Mycenaean chamber tomb at the site Melathria, near the village of Skoura in Laconia. Skoura is close to Sparta, opposite to and east of the Vapheio tholos tomb, on the east side of the river Eurotas.

It is a most unusual Mycenaean vase, remarkable for its pictorial decoration at such an early date. In view of the shape of the vase and its linear decoration, it seems to be one of the earliest pictorial vases yet found on the mainland of Greece.

The jug, which is now exhibited in Sparta Museum (Inv. no. 5533), has been restored from fragments, and large pieces of the belly have been completed with plaster. It can be described as follows: Tall jug with cut-away neck (Plate 12a). Light brown clay, polished yellow-pink surface, lustrous red paint which in places has adhered badly and flaked away.

In 1964, in the agora at Sparta, Ch. Christou excavated part of a monumental building which is identified as the Persian Stoa. The most important find was a bronze female portrait statue, Roman in date, which is on display in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens (NM 23321). The identification of the statue as Julia Mamaea, suggested by Ch. Christou, is still prevalent, although several scholars see in the Sparta statue iconographical elements that link it with Caracalla's wife Plautilla or with Annia Faustina, Elagabalus' third wife. However, the rendering of the hairstyle provides evidence for the identification of the woman whom the statue depicts as the empress Julia Aquilia Severa, Elagabalus' second and fourth wife. The erection of a statue of Julia Aquilia Severa in the Persian Stoa is most likely connected with the imperial cult of Elagabalus and his empress in Sparta.

Recently discovered pottery from David Hogarth's 1899 excavation in the Psychro Cave is published in this study. The great majority of these vases can, on the basis of their fabric and decoration, be traced to Malia, Knossos and the Lasithi Plain. During the MM I-LM I A period most of the fine ware pottery dedicated at the Psychro came from Malia. The monumental size of the sanctuary and the large number (and the elite character) of the votives indicates that during MM I B-LM I A Psychro was the main extra-urban sanctuary for the polity centred at Malia. During LM I B-III A1/2 virtually all of the decorated vases from Psychro are Knossian. This change suggests that Mycenaean Knossos assumed control of the sanctuary during this time, and that some of these vases are those referred to in the Linear B tablet from Knossos KN. Fp 1 that lists dedications of oil sent to Dictaean Zeus.

Three vase-groups, largely drawn from material found in the Purification Trench on Rheneia and published in Délos 15 and 17, are discussed in this paper. The first belongs to the Late Geometric period while the other two are to be placed in the first half of the seventh century BC. All three may be linked in sequence and together illustrate a pottery tradition which is likely to be Parian. Evidence is presented linking the Attic Würzburg Group with a Cycladic artist here identified as the Ad Painter and located on Paros.

The story of the Rhodian knight Dieudonné de Gozon and the slaying of the great dragon of Malpasso is, largely owing to Schiller's adoption of the theme in a ballad, one of the best-known legends of its type. It is one of several instances in which an historical personage figures as the hero of this quite mythical adventure.

Dieudonné de Gozon, a member of the Provençal langue, was the third Grand Master of the Knights of S. John at Rhodes, ruling from 1346 to 1353. He is represented as a simple knight at the time of his great adventure. As might be expected, no contemporary or nearly contemporary authority mentions the dragon-fight of de Gozon. But so early as Mandeville and Schiltberger we find anonymous Rhodian knights figuring as the heroes of current folk-tales of the chivalric type.

With the idea of drawing attention to the fact that the whole of Crete including the most westerly parts had been occupied during every phase of the Minoan Bronze Age, if not earlier in Neolithic times, I recently listed sites of those periods known to me or reported by others in the province of Khania. Between 27 and 30 April 1966, my wife and I visited two areas on the south-west coast of the island (Fig. 1) where no Bronze Age sites appear to have been noted. These were (A) west of Palaiokhora (Fig. 2), and (B) between Sfakia and Frangokastelli (Fig. 3). Two small Minoan settlements were identified near the sea in area (A), and scattered traces of Minoan occupation in (B). The pottery seemed to reflect occupation during the flourishing period of the Minoan civilization between Middle Minoan I and Late Minoan I rather than earlier or later. The most westerly site visited (A. 7) might yield to excavation an interesting picture of what a small Minoan settlement in a remote area was like. In addition to the Minoan, a number of later, Greek and Roman, sites were observed. The most important of the Roman sites is B. 7 in the middle of the plain by Frangokastelli with substantial remains of an early Christian basilica church.

Cretulae is the name given in this article to the small clay nodules, stamped with one or more seal impressions, that have been found in quantity at most Bronze Age sites in the Near East. The Minoan examples are generally smaller than those found at other sites, and the great majority of them have a hole through which string once passed. That is to say, they are lumps of clay squeezed round string and then sealed. At most of the sites in Crete where they are known, they have been found in conjunction with inscribed clay tablets and clay disks. At Hagia Triada they are unique in being for the most part countermarked with a sign of the Linear A script. The interrelationships of the countermarks and sealings have not previously been recorded, and it is the primary purpose of this article to publish them. The catalogue will be found in Appendix A. Proper analysis of it should shed light on Minoan methods of administration, and perhaps too on the purpose of the Linear A tablets. That the tablets, or some of them, belong to a coherent system of administration, and are not all mere inventory lists of what happened to be coming into or going out of store at a particular moment, seems guaranteed by the fact, to which I shall revert later, that totals in the same numerical proportion are found at widely distant sites.

Square brackets denote conjectural restorations. S denotes the stone; B Professor Bosanquet, to whose copies and photographs of the inscription I owe all my knowledge of it.