The recent publication of the Attic black-figured pottery from the sanctuary of Aphaia on Aegina has brought into question the widely accepted date for the construction of the late archaic temple and its sculpture. Much of the pottery comes from the terrace system around the temple which preceded the building's construction. 47.7% of the black-figured pottery is later than the commonly assumed date of c. 510 for the destruction and rebuilding of the temple. Using the latest pottery and the widely accepted Studniczka-Langlotz chronology a terminus post quem is provided during the time of the Persian Wars. The range of pottery also shows that the terrace fills around the temple fall into the same chronological horizon as deposits at Athens which have been linked to the Persian destruction and may, in fact, be even later. The historical context for the rebuilding seems to be in the affluent years after the Persian Wars when the cities of Greece were able to benefit from booty won on the field of battle.

This article considers the contents of the temple of Hera at Olympia in the light of Pausanias' account and of excavation reports. Of all the temples Pausanias describes, the Heraion is the most crowded, and it is argued that by his day it was acting as a storeroom, primarily for objects from nearby buildings. The implications are assessed for the history of the attribution of the Heraion, and for the use of temples in Pausanias' day.

Since the excavations of Carapanos at Dodona in 1878, Epirus has remained terra incognita to the archaeologist. In regard to prehistoric archaeology the reason is to be found in the Epirote terrain; the plains are usually small, and the humid climate encourages grass, with the result that settlements, unlike those of Thessaly or Macedonia, are too small to raise a tumulus and any deposit is covered with turf. The following sites include the re-excavation of Dodona by Mr. Evangelides and some scattered settlements found by myself during my visits to Epirus.

Two major works have been published that consider in detail Minoan relief-carved stone vessels, Peter Warren's Minoan Stone Vases (1969) and Bernd Kaiser's Untersuchungen zum minoischen Relief (1976). However, while both these texts provide useful catalogues of the vessels that had been discovered up to the time of their writing, neither provides an analysis of these vessels that considers the body of artefacts as a whole, rather than as a series of individual pieces. This trend has continued until the present day, with numerous articles appearing on the more famous pieces, such as the Harvester Vase and the Boxer Rhyton, but nothing examining the entire corpus of material. In this paper it is argued that when these vessels are considered together they produce an important indication of the sources of power that were used by the elite of Minoan society, specifically the male members of the elite, to justify and reinforce their elevated position in society, and furthermore, that the message of these vessels was aimed at other members of elite society as well as the non-elite.

Survey and excavation between 1988 and 1991 have revealed new evidence for the form, date, and history of the Roman stoa at Sparta. Nearly 200 m long, it was double-fronted and colonnaded, finished in marble, with two storeys on the S side and perhaps a single portico to the N, set either side of a central row of brick-faced concrete compartments that helped consolidate the acropolis plateau. Its order may have been archaizing Doric; it may have represented a reconstructed version of the Persian stoa. At the W end it buttressed the Round Building and its square podium. Evidence of the stratigraphy and architecture suggests it was built c. AD 130 and that the colonnades collapsed in the late 4th cent., after which it was partly incorporated into the late Roman wall circuit. The nearly central, cross-vaulted nymphaeum (bays XI–XII) was reused in the Middle Byzantine period for religious purposes, when a church was built nearby; possibly this was the church and monastery founded by St Nikon Metanoeites c.975. Occupation continued until c.1350. Interpretation of the topography of Sparta in the light of the new evidence from the stoa suggests that the still elusive agora may have been on the upper plateau N of the stoa, rather than beneath the stadium to the S.

Though tortoises are not objects of value, and unlikely to have been used as sacrificial victims, Pausanias describes representations of them in conjunction with a deity in a few sanctuaries. The reasons for this, and the part played by tortoise shells in cults is discussed.

In the following paper an attempt has been made to bring together scattered notices from printed sources regarding the geographical distribution of the Bektashi sect, as indicated by the position of existing or formerly existing convents of the order. I have further included such information on this subject as I have been able to obtain from my own journeys and enquiries (1913–15) among the Bektashi: nearly all this information is gathered from Bektashi sources, and much from more than one such source. I hope to have made a fairly complete record of Bektashi establishments in Albania, now the most important sphere of their activities, and a substantial basis for further enquiry in the other countries where the sect is to be found, with the exception of Asia Minor, for which my sources are at present inadequate.

From the evidence at our disposal the Bektashi establishments in Asia Minor would seem to be grouped most thickly in the ‘Kyzylbash’ or Shia Mahommedan districts, especially in (1) the vilayets of Angora and Sivas, and (2) in the south-west corner (Lycia) of that of Konia, where the Shia tribes are known from their occupation as Tachtadji (‘wood-cutters’). For the third great stronghold of Anatolian Shias, the Kurdish vilayets of Kharput and Erzeroum, no information as to Bektashi tekkes is available.

Shells from the excavation of the West Court House at Knossos are analysed and compared with those from other Neolithic and Early Minoan sites.

The position and general form of the Stoa by the Harbour at Perachora have long been known. It was discovered and excavated in 1932, the third and fullest year of Payne's excavations at Perachora. Brief notices of its discovery are to be found in the preliminary reports for that year, in BSA xxxii (1931–2) 260–1, and JHS lii (1932) 242, and in AJA xxxvii (1933) 155, AA xlvii (1932) 563, RÉG xlix (1936) 151, and in ILN 8/7/33; of these the last is perhaps the fullest. In Perachora i a single paragraph is devoted to the stoa on pp. 14–15, but rather more information can be gathered from the plan of the Hera Akraia temple, the triglyph altar, and the stoa on plate 138. This shows the position, plan, and state of preservation of the building when it was excavated. Since the publication of Perachora i in 1940 no further work has been done on the stoa, but there is a brief treatment of it in R. Martin, Recherches sur l'agora grecque, 461, 465 n. 4, 486, and in tables iv and v, and a discussion and drawing of the Ionic semi-column capital in G. Roux, L' Architecture dans l'Argolide aux IVe et IIIe siècles avant J.-C., 346 and plate 91.1.

This article is the fourth in a series designed to chart the diffusion of Hellenistic motifs, not only from province to province but also across craft boundaries. We are seldom able to measure these processes with any degree of chronological precision, but when we can the evidence indicates the astonishing speed with which even the most complex decorative innovations could become common property over wide areas. The Medusa Rondanini and a closely related body of derivative material provide one of the few easily documented cases for such rapid diffusion. Though we cannot expect to understand completely the mechanics of the process, the isolation and examination of its visible proofs provide some valuable controls for a much wider group of objects.

The tripod-lebes is characterized by two round vertical handles cast with a plate behind and a strap in front, both of which are riveted to the cauldron, and by three legs, each cast with a plate, also riveted to the cauldron and supported by struts. Schwendemann asserts that it is properly a cooking-pot, for in Homer a mixing-bowl is a krater, but a big tripod is put on the fire to provide bath-water, and a hog could be seethed in a lebes. The monuments support this view, for the tripod-lebes is not used as a mixing-bowl in a komos scene or the like, even long after it had lost its function—to be set on the fire and then taken off again.

A third season of excavations at Palaikastro was concentrated on the central area of the new site where four main structures have been identified; Buildings 1, 3, 4 and 5. This report highlights the more interesting finds, including the head of the ivory statuette, the torso and arms of which were found last year, and the first evidence for the LM II reoccupation of east Crete in the form of a Palace Style sherd and part of a central Cretan Ephyraean goblet.

The inscriptions here published, which were found in the Anglo-Turkish excavations at Old Smyrna between 1948 and 1953, are mostly fragments from the short, trivial writings of daily life. There are also one or two dedications, and a few inscriptions painted by potters on their wares. No inscriptions on stone were found, but this is not surprising, for the parts uncovered were chiefly private houses and stretches of the city's great wall. One important temple of a goddess, perhaps Artemis, was located and cleared, but it had unfortunately been much eroded. No other public building was reached, nor an agora: so the present epigraphic harvest should more properly be called gleanings, some of it merely owners' or merchants' marks—single letters or signs—on domestic pottery.

In i.1–21 Thucydides gives a brief interpretation of early Greek history. This is important not only for the critical standard of its author, but also because in ten instances he says what his evidence is. Twice his evidence is archaeological. The two passages deserve careful study.

Mycenae had been destroyed by the Argives in the 460's and was deserted till the third century B.C. Thanks to modern archaeologists and Pausanias we can form some idea of what was to be seen in the time of Thucydides. Much of the Bronze Age wall, including the Lion Gate, should have been above ground; it was anyhow visible to Pausanias, and before him the Hellenistic fortifiers had made use of it. Some of the tholos tombs were open, to judge by finds made in their excavation and by Pausanias's mention of ‘underground treasuries of Atreus and his sons’. Of the Bronze Age palace and houses nothing was left above ground, so the stratification suggests. But the ruins of the city demolished in the 460's must still have survived, and its sanctuaries may have been intact; it would have been natural enough for the Argives to spare them, and there is some positive evidence that the temple on the summit of Mycenae and the sanctuary near the fountain house outside the Lion Gate were both kept in repair and that the Agamemnoneion over half a mile to the south was still visited.

In an article on the difficulty of identifying marbles from the Aegean area Mr. Colin Renfrew and Dr. J. Springer Peacey rightly criticize the careless use by later scholars of the results obtained in 1890 by G. R. Lepsius, who, by cutting thin sections of various marbles and examining them under transmitted light, claimed to be able to identify Pentelic, Hymettan, Parian, Naxian, and, less specifically, ‘Island’ marbles.

It seems, however, that even when applied with care the method is useless, and Renfrew and Peacey will have none of it. ‘The use’, they say, ‘of the terms “Pentelic”, “Hymettan”, “Parian”, “Naxian”, and so forth, applied to ancient sculptures on the basis of simple visual inspection or of microscopic examination of thin specimens, is not justified…. No single characteristic or combination of characteristics is sufficient to identify with certainty the source of a single given specimen…. No reliance can be placed on Lepsius' marble identifications, and even less [sic] on those authors who have ascribed marble to supposed sources on the basis of colour and grainsize…. Those who make them or follow them are perpetuating a myth which is just eighty years old…’

In his admirable paper ‘Ravennatum Palatium Sacrum’ (Det Kgl. Danske Videnskabernes Selskab. Archaeologisk-kunsthistoriske Meddelelser 3, 2. Copenhagen, 1941) Dr. Einar Dyggve has revealed to us the type of the emperors' reception halls—la basilica ipetrale per ceremonie—in the late Roman empire. Analysing in a masterly way the famous mosaic of S. Apollinare Nuovo showing the Palatium of Theoderic, the missorium of Theodosius, the literary evidence for the Magnaura of Constantine, and architectural material, such as the palace of Diocletian in Spalato, from the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries A.D., he defines a highly monumental tripartite architectural complex consisting of a tribunalium, also to be styled atrium or basilica discoperta, with a triumphal arch at its upper end, then a triclinium behind the atrium, and finally a most holy innermost absidal room, a choir.

The excavations at Tell el-Dabca/Avaris have produced exciting finds for the past 30 years, but none more riveting than the so-called ‘Minoan’ frescoes of the past half-decade. The publication of these fragmentary wall paintings has been commendably fast, but has also involved dramatic changes in the hypotheses put forth by the excavators. The present article attempts to summarize the situation by charting the discoveries announced between 1992 and 1996, and relating these to the changes in opinion of the excavators over that same period of time. Given the bombshell dropped most recently by Bietak, namely that the wall paintings may not be associated with the Hyksos period at all, but rather with the early 18th Dynasty Egyptian reoccupation of the site, it is here suggested that the spate of literature published by secondary authors (i.e. those not immediately involved in the excavation and interpretation of the site) be brought to a temporary halt, until Bietak and his team have completed their exploration of the relevant areas of Tell el-Dabca and have published all of the pertinent data, to both their satisfaction and ours.

Our operations in this island, which lasted in all from March 20th until the end of May, were mainly tentative in character; it contains evidently a large number of ancient sites, but unfortunately, in most of them, a great deal of unsystematic and unrecorded digging has been for a long time carried on. It seemed, therefore, desirable to ascertain, first, whether it would be necessary to continue for more than one season; and, secondly, what sites would best repay investigation.

The report of last Season's work must necessarily be of a somewhat summary character. The fuller description and elaborate plans and sections required for the due illustration of the results of the complete excavation of the Grand Staircase will find a more fitting place in the forthcoming general work on the Palace. On the other hand as it was only possible to lay bare a section of the large building on the hill to the West of the Palace, it has seemed undesirable at present to publish anything beyond a very brief account of the portion as yet explored, except so far as relates to the Shrine of the Fetish Idols. I have only to add that throughout the recent explorations I had, as before, the valued cooperation of my assistant Dr. Mackenzie.

So little is known concerning the site of the famous Hierapolis of Syria, that even a hurried visit is worthy of record. I passed through the place twice in the spring of 1908, in the company of Mr. Richard Norton, stopping on each occasion a night and part of two days. It was inadvisable, in view of the main purpose of my journey, to delay long enough to make a plan, or do anything else likely to excite the ready suspicion of the local authorities and the Circassian colonists. We contented ourselves, therefore, with making a general survey and photographing, with copying all inscriptions which the promise of a reward could induce the Circassians to show us, and with buying small antiquities.