In the spring of 1955 the Water Company, extending its drainage system to include Erechtheion Street, a road in the neighbourhood south of the Acropolis running south from the street of Dionysius the Areopagite, uncovered part of the wall and a gate of the ancient city. The Ephoria of Acropolis Antiquities under its then director, Mr. J. Miliades, undertook the excavation of these remains. With the aid of his epimelete, Dr. G. Dontas, the present director of the Acropolis, he cleared the wall and the gate down to bedrock, and extended his investigation to uncover as many building remains and other finds as possible, under a fair amount of pressure from the Water Company, who were in a hurry to begin their own work. The excavation, which took place from March until June 1955, has added considerably to our knowledge of the topography of the area during the classical period; at the same time it uncovered a Dark Age cemetery.

We here conclude the series of reports on our journeys in the Dodecanese Islands. The work on Rhodes, begun by Mr. and Mrs. Lazenby and Hope Simpson in August 1968, was continued by Mr. and Mrs. Hope Simpson during the end of August and early September 1970. Hope Simpson also made a short visit to Chalki in September, and a longer visit to Astypalaia in October. As previously, our main objective has been to gauge the extent of prehistoric, and especially of Mycenaean, habitation in the Dodecanese. We have now visited all the main islands, for varying periods of time and with varying degrees of success. Much still remains to be done, and the results are subject to the usual limitations inherent in surface exploration. There was, for instance, no time to complete a full survey of the island of Rhodes, and our work there was more in the nature of a ‘reconnaissance in force’. It should be explained, however, that in addition to the usual obstacles of the terrain, the widespread Hellenistic and Roman settlements on Rhodes have evidently covered or obliterated most of the signs of earlier habitation on the same sites. On Astypalaia, for instance, conditions were much more favourable for eclectic surface search, and the measure of success was accordingly greater.

In 1983 the Larisa Museum received an inscribed stele, purporting to be from the farming area of Agia Triada. Even today, parts can be seen in this area of the fortifications of an ancient city, thought to be the Thessalian Skotoussa. The inscription comprises 154 lines, and is written in the Thessalian (Pelasgian) dialect; it dates from 197–185 BC. It is a decree of the city (which is now proved to be Skotoussa), and concerns the description of a zone inside and outside the city walls, which was to contain no privately owned land. The decree was passed as part of the reorganization of the defences of the city after the collapse of Macedonian supremacy in the region. The zone was defined in detail using as reference points the towers, distances between the towers, and other sections of the walls, as well as parts of the city adjoining the wall. The result of such a systematic body of cross-reference is a description of nearly the whole of the city's fortifications. Following a topographic survey of the Agia Triada region, and taking into account older surveys, a restoration of the course of the wall is attempted. Using the inscription as a guide, a comparison is made between the sections of the wall that are described, together with other place-names appearing in the inscription, and the surviving ruins at Agia Triada.

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 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.

Some recent statements in the scholarly literature exaggerate the length of ancient catapults, so a critique is offered, and an explanation for the source of the error is suggested. A brief account is given of how to calculate the dimensions of the ‘classic’ types of ancient catapult according to the formulae for their construction in Philon and Vitruvius. The implications for fitting artillery to fortifications are highlighted. It is emphasised that the type of device for which first generation artillery towers were designed were tension-powered catapults, not torsion-powered models. They were bow catapults (tension), not spring catapults (torsion), and therefore, since the formulae apply only to spring catapults, none of the ancient formulae apply to the machines for which first generation artillery towers were built.

In May 1970 an Albanian delegation attended the Second International Congress of Southeast European Studies at Athens, and one of the delegates, Professor Frano Prendi, with his characteristic kindness, sent me copies of three Communications which were delivered to the Congress. As the illustrations in these Communications were of poor quality, he sent me two photographs from which two of the illustrations had been made. I reproduce these photographs here as Plates 34 and 35.

The general thesis of the delegation was that the formation of the Illyrian ethnos in central and south Albania began at the end of the ‘Eneolithic’ period; that an autochthonous evolution followed which spanned the entire Bronze Age and continued into the Early Iron Age; and that during this long period the ‘Ur-Illyrians’, if I may style them so, had reciprocal exchanges with other people, but preserved their own ethnic character.

Information about the pattern of settlement and population in the Morea c. 1830 has been used to reconstruct the height zonation of the population (families) at the end of the War of Greek Independence. Statistical testing of the height distributions showed that the proportion of the population living below the 100 m contour, and thus in the lowlands (27.7 per cent), was significantly greater than expected at the regional scale, whilst the higher, more secure mountains repelled permanent settlement. This result, supported by a detailed examination of the height zonation of population by geographical areas, leads the authors to question the long accepted, but largely untested, proposition that the lowlands of Greece were generally devoid of settlements and people during the period of Ottoman rule, especially in its more capricious phases. The lowlands were not, in fact, deserted.

Building work at the National Archaeological Museum in Athens in 2003 led to the rediscovery of the two male skeletons from Shaft Grave VI at Mycenae, found by Panayiotis Stamatakis in 1877 as he completed the excavation of Grave Circle A begun by Schliemann. The find provided a triple opportunity. First came a re-assessment of Stamatakis's important and often pioneering role both at Mycenae and in the archaeology of the later Bronze Age, which has generally been overlooked both because of Schliemann's very vocal antagonism and because of his own overwork and early death. Second, a detailed study of the skulls along with the post-cranial bones allowed a reconstruction of the faces of the two men to set beside the earlier reconstructions of the faces of seven individuals from Grave Circle B. This showed that although the two men were very likely related to each other, one could not demonstrate kinship with any of the seven faces from Circle B on the basis of their facial appearance alone. Finally – to be described in subsequent articles – it opened the way for the first modern morphological and chemical analysis (using strontium isotope ratios) of the entire collection of surviving human skeletal material from Grave Circle A to determine the number of individuals represented, their biological sex and their age at death. By assessing the quality of their living conditions as reflected in their skeletal and dental health, and by exploring skeletal evidence of engagement in physical activities through activity-related modifications there was the opportunity to reconstruct the lifestyle of the men and women buried in the grave circle.

Οικοδομικές δραστηριότητες στο Εθνικό Αρχαιολογικό Μουσείο στην Αθήνα το 2003 οδήγησαν στην ανακάλυψη εκ νέου των δύο ανδρικών σκελετών από το Λακκοειδή Τάφο VI, που αττοκάλυψε ο Παναγιώτης Σταματάκης το 1877 με την ολοκλήρωση της ανασκαφής του Ταφικού Κύκλου Α, η οποία ξεκίνησε από τον Heinrich Schliemann. Αυτό το εύρημα μας έδωσε μία τριπλή ευκαιρία. Πρώτον, επαναξιολογήθηκε ο σημανηκός και συχνά πρωτοποριακός ρόλος, που διαδραμάτισε ο Σταματάκης στις Μυκήνες και την αρχαιολογία της ύστερης Εποχής του Χαλκού. Ο ρόλος του αυτός γενικά παραβλέφθηκε εξαιτίας τόσο του έντονου ανταγωνισμού εκ μέρους του Schliemann όσο κοα του υπερβολικού φόρτου εργασίας αλλά και του πρώιμου θανάτου του Σταματάκη. Δεύτερον, η λεπτομερής μελέτη των κρανίων και μετα-κρανιακών οστών επέτρεψε την αποκατάσταση των προσώπων των δύο ανδρών και τη σύγκρισή τους με τα πρόσωπα επτά ατόμων από τον Ταφικό Κύκλο Β, τα οποία είχαν νωρίτερα αποκατασταθεί. Αυτή η σύγκριση έδειξε ότι παρά την πιθανή συγγένεια των δύο ανδρών του τάφου VI, δεν μπορεί να υποστηριχθεί ανάλογη σχέση μεταξύ αυτών και των επτά προσώπων από τον Ταφικό Κύκλο Β με μόνο κρντήριο τα φυσιογνωμικά τους χαρακτηριστικά. Τέλος, όπως θα παρουσιαστεί σε επόμιενα άρθρα, η μελέτη αυτή άνοιξε το δρόμο για την πρώτη σύγχρονη μορφολογική και χημική ανάλυση (της ισοτοπικής αναλογίας του στροντίου) ολόκληρης της συλλογής ανθρωπίνων σκελετικών υπολειμμάτων από τον Ταφικό Κύκλο Α, με στόχο τον προσδιορισμό του αριθμού των αντιπροσωπευομένων ατόμων και τον καθορισμό του βιολογικού φύλου και της ηλικίας θανάτου αυτών. Αξιολογώντας την ποιότητα των συνθηκών διαβίωσης των ατόμων αυτών, όπως αυτή ανπκατροπτίζεται στη σκελετική και οδοντική τους υγεία, και εξετάζοντας σκελετικές μοφτυρίες yrn την ενασχόλησή τους με φυσικές δραστηριότητες κατέστη δυνατό να ανασυνθέσουμε τον τρόπο ζωής των ανδρών και γυναικών ττου είχαν ταφεί στον Ταφικό Κύκλο Α.

From the opening of the British School at Athens in 1886 to the outbreak of the First World War, women were regularly admitted as Students. British women were actively engaged in research in Greece, although they were not permitted to join official School excavations until the 1911 campaign at Phylakopi on the island of Melos. This contrasts with the active field research of American women like Harriet Boyd Hawes. Most of the British women had been educated at either Girton College or Newnham College, Cambridge, where they had been influenced by Katharine Jex-Blake and Jane Harrison. For several, notably Hilda Lorimer, Gisela Richter and Eugenie Strong, their residence in Athens was to make a significant contribution to their careers and subsequent study of antiquity.

The excavation is described of a much damaged shrine building five kilometres east-north-east of Sparta, in use from the 7th to the 4th centuries B.C., and again in the 3rd and 4th centuries A.D.

Tile stamps suggest it was dedicated to Zeus Messapeus. Finds include many handmade terracotta statuettes, chiefly of grotesque ithyphallic human figures.

The terracottas, which were recovered during the spring of 1899 from the site of Naukratis, are both more numerous and more important than those obtained during the two previous campaigns. They number nearly four hundred, the specimens ranging in date from the sixth century B.C. to the second century of our era. A number of these are of types akin to those already known at Naukratis, and are present in such quantity as to make it possible to trace the probable development of their various peculiarities. Besides these, and thirty or forty small female heads of “Tanagra” type and other figures of comparatively late date, we have the remains of nearly a score of female heads of unusual size and beauty, which are to be ascribed chiefly to the fifth and fourth centuries B.C.

The rapid increase of our knowlege of prehistoric Aegean antiquities has inevitably brought with it the necessity for repeated amplification of nomenclature. In Schliemann's day, and for some time after, ‘Mycenaean’ seemed easily to cover the field. Presently ‘Proto- and Pre-Mycenaean’ had to be invented. Until lately in Crete all bronze-age fabrics were divided (and the division was taken as chronological as well as according to style), into Kamáres and Mycenaean, although considerable overlapping was observed. This division, though roughly not untrue of the bulk of the pottery, is now found to be too general.

Since remains, especially of an artistic nature, that can be definitely assigned to the Frankish period, are rare in Greece, the following monuments are of some interest.

The warrior relief (Fig. 1) is walled up in the house of Ioannes Sikiotes in the hamlet of Parori, at the foot of Taygetus about half an hour south of Mistra. It is of local bluish marble, and measures 85 × 53 m.; the height of the relief is 02 m. It shews a warrior en face, though his legs are represented in profile to the right; the hair does not seem to be indicated, nor is there any trace of a helmet; the eyes are roughly oval in shape and the pupils are indicated by dots; the ears are big, the nose is snub, and the mouth is rendered by a line that curves downwards at the corners; the neck is long, the body has no indication of detail except the nipples, the chest is narrow and the hips are rather wide; the legs and feet are very small.

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.

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.

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.

When I wrote the Excursus (Excursus on the Combed Ware: Evidence for Beekeeping) for the report on the Vari House, I was unfortunately compelled, through ignorance, to leave one obvious loose end. The so-called bronze beehive from Pompeii, discussed on p. 403 with n. 53, remained an enigma of which all that could be definitely said was that it was certainly not a beehive.

This object, it will be recalled, was published, and illustrated in a neat, measured drawing, in T. L. Donaldson's Pompeii (London, 1827) ii., 13 and plate opposite p. 12 (Fig. 1). As near as can be calculated from the indications of scale in Donaldson's plate, the dimensions of the vessel were as follows: height c. 0·61 m.; maximum diameter c. 0·63 m.; diameter of mouth c. 0·28 m.; of lid c. 0·56 m. The brief statement about it in the text was confined to the information that it was made of bronze, was found at Pompeii, and was in the Museum at Naples. All the later works which refer to it, or reproduce the drawing, seem to derive from Donaldson, and I was led to believe from its absence from nineteenth-century catalogues that it had disappeared from the Museum's collection long ago.

Professor Myres has been the chief agent in inducing English archaeologists to appreciate the significance of the Danubian province for Greek prehistory. Since his first paper in Science Progress, 1896–7, he has frequently discussed in a stimulating manner the relations between the two areas. In his latest pronouncement he not only shews how political considerations have affected the interpretation of the relevant facts, but has stated in an unequivocal way the essential conditions for an objective decision between two contrasted views: ‘not only continuity of material on a series of sites, but coherence of styles within a chronological scheme.’ Six years ago both desiderata seemed far from fulfilment. The Danubian province was still separated by the Balkan wall from the Aegean; not even its relative chronology was clear. Subsequent discoveries by Heurtley in Macedonia and by Fewkes in the Morava valley have substantially reduced the gap between the two provinces in one direction. Even on the Middle Danube Banner and Tompa have established a provisionally acceptable cultural sequence. At the same time fresh comparative material has been made available beyond the Aegean which must affect any interpretation of Danubian-Aegean relationships. A re-examination of some of the issues might then appropriately be dedicated to the far-sighted savant who first inspired my own interest in the Danube valley.