Continuing the lines laid down in 1906, the campaign of 1907 was confined entirely to the site of Sparta itself. Our thanks must again be expressed to the Hellenic Government and the Ephor-General of Antiquities for their continuous support. This year we have especially to mention the enlargement of the Sparta Museum. The number of our finds had made this necessary, as the two rooms and entrance-hall of the old Museum were quite full when our work began. Two rooms have now been added to the right and left of the old building, doubling its original capacity. These rooms we have found most useful for purposes of study, and for arranging and repairing the finds, and we are especially grateful for the speed with which this improvement has been carried out.

On March 31st, 1903, and the three following days I conducted a trial excavation at a site situated at about an hour's distance from Roussolakkos, and known as Hagios Nikolaos from a small church of that name. During the first three days I employed ten men, on the fourth only two.

The most prominent feature of the landscape is the height called Módhi (1776 ft.). From the foot of this there runs almost due east a deep valley with a river-bed, which, although quite dry at the time when I saw it, must sometimes carry off a considerable volume of water from the surrounding hills. The valley is at first narrow and its sides very steep, but a little way above the chapel it broadens out considerably: although the left bank is steep and in places almost precipitous, the right side rises in a gentle slope, forming a series of terraces which are under cultivation and afford a good harvest in spite of the stony character of the soil. It is on this southern slope that the chapel stands, situated on a small outcrop of rock and surrounded by cornfields.

The village of Angelona lies amongst the hills surrounding the plain of Molai, midway between the latter and Monemvasia. About half an hour east of the village is a small plateau known as Kollýri; this plateau is bounded on its south-eastern side by a revma, tributary to the greater ravine which runs down to the sea south of the ruins of Epidaurus Limera. At the head of the revma is a perpetual spring of good water, and in its neighbourhood are many traces of former human occupation; roof tiles of slightly concave section with a rough red-to-black glaze, and sherds of black-glazed and coarse red pottery are common. A few hundred yards above (west of) the spring an anta capital of poros (Fig. 1) lies on the surface; the block measures 0·82 m. in length, 0·80 in breadth and 0·23 in thickness, and is remarkable because the profile is continuous on the long side but only extends for 0·33 m. on the other. On one end there are traces of an attempt to work the profile, and on the top a series of rough toolings (dowel holes?) parallel to the breadth.

The following article embodies the results of researches made by the writer at the supposed site of the Sanctuary of Poseidon at the Isthmus and of the Isthmian games. Two short campaigns of excavation upon a very small scale were made in 1932 and 1933, in the course of which many areas were tested. Mr. H. Megaw has rendered invaluable assistance by making a revised and accurate plan of Justinian's fort (the so-called temenos) and a new plan of the district which includes all the areas in which trials were made; the section dealing with the fortifications (pp. 69–79) is also his work. The writer's thanks are also due to Mr. E. J. A. Kenny, who assisted in the preparation of the western section of the large plan; fig. 9 is based on a large-scale plan also by him. A short notice of the operations undertaken in 1932 appeared in J.H.S. 52, 244, but at least one suggestion made in it has now to be abandoned in the light of the fresh evidence secured in 1933.

This article gives a first publication of two late antique statues; it discusses their archaeological context suggesting an appropriate date and tries to place them in their historical and cultural environment.

The statues of Messene are important because they represent a rare instance of two late antique statues from Achaia for the study of which a precise archaeological context is available. They were the products of a local workshop and could be dated to the first quarter of the fourth century. The two late antique statues, of an emperor (perhaps Constantine I) and of Hermes, and a third earlier one showing Artemis Laphria, were part of a late Roman sculptural assemblage. It is here argued that they all stood together in niches, inside the reception room of a wealthy town mansion. They offer a vivid insight into the taste and self-representation of the owner of the house. It is suggested that they represent a mix of contemporary political reference and traditional values of the Greco-Roman aristocracy: loyalty to the Imperial House, social status and education, euergetism, and perhaps traditional religion.

Remains of a recently excavated small theatre at the foot of a fortified hill, identified with Aitolian Makyneia, were studied on the basis of electronic surveying, CAD, graphical and analytical approximation techniques. This theatre, of the 4th or 3rd century BC, partly excavated on the hillside and built of large sandstone slabs, has an unusual shape, with its koilon consisting of a curvilinear wing of 14 rows of seats and an adjacent linear wing of three rows of blocks forming a single-row proedria. Geometric modelling of the theatre remains on the basis of graphical, and especially of analytical techniques, indicates that the circular wing of the koilon consists of equidistant, concentric rows of seats based on a design arc of 90° for the 1st row, with the corresponding chord normal to the linear wing. Possible poor remains of a skene were found oblique (81°) to the linear wing.

The Hieron of Athena Chalkioikos was identified and to a large extent excavated in 1907, by the late Mr. Guy Dickins, who completed the task in the following year. Accounts of these campaigns, and of the principal finds, were published by him in the Annual (xiii. pp. 137–154, and xiv. pp. 142–146, respectively). This undertaking was practically limited to the thorough exploration of the area enclosed within the wall of the Hieron (B.S.A. xiii., l.c., Fig. 1), and except for the uncovering of the south face of the south wall, and for one trial trench about twenty metres in length, running southwards from the centre of this wall, no excavation took place to the south of the Precinct, in the area contained between it and the retaining-wall of the cavea of the theatre below. As this trench had yielded a large quantity of pottery, including fine fragments of the local Geometric style, a systematic exploration of this area seemed a duty, to be undertaken without delay, when operations were resumed in 1924.

Work commenced on April 7th, 1924, and lasted until the end of the season (May 31st); in 1925, from April 13th to May 30th. The number of men employed seldom exceeded ten, though about sixteen were at work in the second half of May 1924.

Among the more intriguing Minoan architectural forms is the so-called ‘Minoan Hall’. It consists, at its simplest, of a light well, a fore hall, and a room (polythyron) closed off by what are known as pier-and-door partitions. The Hall was located in the residential areas of the palaces, also in some Neopalatial houses, and was usually accompanied by a ‘lustral basin’, a square sunken room reached by steps often flanked by an elaborate balustrade. A window or a platform often enabled observation within the basin from ground level.

Examples of the Hall were once known only from the Neopalatial period, but two earlier, Protopalatial, examples have been identified at Malia. The later of the two occurs in Middle Minoan II Building A in Quartier Mu. It consists of the lustral basin, a large hall with a light well, and a polythyron. The earlier example, a Minoan Hall suite in the Middle Minoan I Crypte hypostyle, consists of a unique series of five basement rooms, the first bordered by a light well, then a polythyron, followed by a relatively small, square room with a large interior window (a lustral basin?), with a benched entrance room next door. South of these rooms was a large hall at ground level, probably for groups, from which one accessed separately the first and last of the rooms underground.

Comparison of the two room groups suggests that the Crypte hypostyle example is the forerunner of the Quartier Mu group. Specifically, the latter's polythyron was, for practical reasons, set at ground level while its lustral basin, which involved chthonic connections, remained at basement level and was approached by steps. The same arrangement, but with some adjustments, was to be adapted later, in Neopalatial times, completing a long history of a social and ceremonial architectural form that may have begun as early as the Early Minoan Period.

About A.D. 400 the historian Olympiodorus, surveying the contemporary state of culture with a perhaps conventional sigh of nostalgia for a vanished silver age, wrote that “Of the other liberal arts, such as arithmetic, geometry and astronomy, there are a few remains left to our time. But of music even its fame is not known to us. We have books on musical theory but we do not understand them”. Much the same had been said by Aristoxenus some seven centuries previously, which suggests that as far as the ancient world, at least, is concerned, any attempt at reconstructing the music of Greece can never be more than hypothetical and subjective. This does not mean that valuable information cannot be sifted from ancient texts and archaeological evidence, and the number of studies cited over a 25-year period by Winnington-Ingram testifies to the continuing interest of the subject despite its intrinsic limitations.

When the British School decided to bring to an end its excavations at Sparta in the year 1910, after five campaigns, it was fully aware that the possibilities of the site were by no means exhausted. Its varied activities before the war, at Phylakopi and in Crete, and after the war at Mycenae, have formed the subjects of full reports in various volumes of the Annual from XVII (1910–11) onwards, but when Mr. Wace's tenure of the Directorship came to an end, the decision of the Committee to resume work on a site of the Classical period led to the renewal of work at Sparta forming their first choice. The fact that the new Director had taken an active part in three of the five original campaigns was an additional reason for returning there, and it was accordingly resolved to resume operations in 1924, with the Theatre as the first objective; and in hopes, moreover, of carrying out a fuller exploration of the Acropolis, and also of gaining fresh information as to the topography of ancient Sparta by extensively testing portions of the ancient city previously unexamined. The principal results of the work of the two seasons, 1924 and 1925, form the subject of the present report.

This study uses the collection of fifteenth- to twentieth-century travel literature from the BSA library to consider issues of (elite) mobility in the Aegean Sea. These texts contain a wealth of information on the routes chosen by travellers between various islands and mainland ports, and on the navigability of the Aegean basin. By using a combination of computational Proximal Point Analysis and Social Network Analysis, these routes are visualised, and discussion focuses on how navigation varied both between centuries and according to the traveller's place of origin. It is suggested that travellers were dependent on other sorts of networks, and that routes travelled were shaped greatly by the economics and politics of the day. It is also proposed that methodologies used in this paper offer great potential for engaging broad-scale sets of archive data.

The present paper examines the quantity and function of the pottery found at the Greek Early Neolithic sites. Review of the quantitative, technological, typological, functional and contextual data suggest that Early Neolithic pottery was most probably a regular component of material culture. Thus, in contrast with the highly favoured hypothesis that Early Neolithic pots were used mainly for cult-related or socially related prospects, it is argued that pottery had, since this early period, a variety of functions. It is very probable that some vessels were used in ceremonies or were high-status objects. The majority of vessels, however, had an active role in daily life concerning the storage and transportation of supplies, the preparation of food (most probably excluding cooking) and the treatment of other raw materials.

The first stone ashlar blocks of Greek architecture, those of the mid-seventh-century temples at Isthmia and Corinth, pose a problem for understanding the beginnings of Greek stone construction.1 Their peculiar feature is the presence of grooves plausibly explained as a way to move the blocks with ropes. Yet scholars disagree about how these ropes would have been used, and during what stage of construction. The first excavators of the two temples suggested that the ropes would have served to lift each block into place, and were subsequently extracted from the grooves once the block had been set against its neighbour. Later scholars dismissed this theory as both inconsistent with the evidence and technically impracticable, questioning whether lifting machines were used in Greek construction as early as the mid-seventh century. Currently, the widely accepted view holds that the crane appeared in the Greek world only in the late sixth century. An alternative hypothesis is that the grooves were cut early in the construction process so that ropes could be used to manoeuvre the blocks within the quarry. However, the ‘lifting’ theory continues to have its adherents. Clarifying the significance of these parallel grooves is thus a matter of some importance to the history of Greek construction. This article reassesses the alternative theses on the basis of a new examination of the evidence, and demonstrates that the idea that the grooves served for lifting is the most plausible. Furthermore, it argues that forerunners of the crane appeared in Greece well before the late sixth century. Finally, by examining how the blocks would have been manoeuvred into place after lifting, it contends that the grooves also served the purpose of placement, with a method anticipating the Classical period's sophisticated lever technique.

Evidence of the Minoan Linear A script in the West Magazines at Knossos is surprisingly thin. Whereas at other important Minoan sites bookkeeping is fairly well attested, and at Hagia Triadha abundantly so, nothing has appeared from Knossos. Of the few graffiti and texts on pithoi published so far, only two are well documented. The others were published by Brice after drafts by Evans. As the latest publication (1982) still relies on Evans's drafts, it seemed reasonable to assume that the pithoi had not been examined for signs since their discovery in 1900–1. In this short article the first, and still tentative, results of such a study are published.

Analysis of 26 oriented samples shows a clear, distinct, stable magnetic remanence in 25 of them. The magnetic carrier is probably 1 mm diameter magnetite and the remanence has thermal characteristics. On this basis, the direction of the geomagnetic field was 355.2°, 60.9° α95 = 1.7° and its intensity was 67 + 8 μT at the time when the kiln was last fired in Late Minoan IB (LMIB) times. The directional parameters are identical to those of LMIB destruction levels in central Crete and with the Minoan Plinian ash layer on Thera, but the mean direction differs from those of LMIB destruction sites in eastern Crete and those of the base surge and higher Minoan volcanic ash deposits on Thera. It is considered that the kiln was last fired at an almost identical time to the LMIB destruction levels of central Crete which appears to have occurred several years before the LMIB destruction levels in eastern Crete.

Scientific analysis of samples takes from metal objects and metallurgical products excavated during the 1960s at Kastri on Kythera provide new evidence concerning, variously, the Aegean metals trade and metallurgy on Kythera. The samples date to the Second Palace (Neopalatial), Classical and Late Roman periods. The Bronze Age material comprises fragments of copper ingots and silver cups, neither of which metal is locally available in Kythera, and the later material relates largely to local smelting and possibly smithing of iron, whose origin is uncertain. These activities are related to preliminary information concerning the distribution at each period of metallurgical activity across the island that has been generated by the intensive surface survey of the Kythera Island Project.

The aim of this paper is to explore the physical connectivity of Attica by examining the realities of travel for Athenians wishing to engage with wider civic, social, economic and cultic institutions. This will be achieved by focussing upon the practicalities of short-, medium- and long-distance travel with the aim of differentiating aspects, modes and reasons for travel. This investigation will be realised through a series of computational scenarios created on the basis of a combination of ancient and nineteenth-century accounts of journeys through Attica along with the archaeological evidence of the Athenian road system. The results of this study shed light upon the constraints on, and opportunities for, participation in wider practices and the experience of travel for the individual traveller. Recent studies have shown there were many spaces in Attica that provided opportunities for Athenians to come together, to interact with each other and participate in civic, ritual and social institutions. The ultimate conclusions of this study will help to illustrate the fundamental connectivity and active engagement of the traveller with the Athenian landscape.

The new Rome inherited from the old a strategic situation in the Mediterranean world that was essentially similar at the beginning of the seventh century to what it had been in the first. Persia, vetus hostis, was still a threat in the east, while in the north there was the less organized but no less persistent threat of migratory peoples pressing across the Danube. By the middle of the seventh century the Byzantine supremacy in the east Mediterranean had been destroyed, and a profound reshaping of the state had been set in train. In discussing some coins and coin hoards from the reign of Heraclius (610–41), I wish to draw attention to the place of the Aegean coastlands in the regional economy of the Byzantine Empire as it was before the Arab expansion. The revival of commerce in the provinces in the ninth century seems to have begun in the coastal cities of the Aegean: this prompts an inquiry into their importance in the sixth and seventh centuries.

The second and third decades of the seventh century were a time of disaster for the Empire, when it was attacked from both the east and the north. The Persian armies conquered Syria in 611 and thereafter were able to make incursions into western Asia Minor, on occasion reaching as far as the shores of the Bosporus. Thomas Presbyter records that they carried captives away from Rhodes, while in the same year the Slavs invaded Crete. The Miracula S. Demetrii gives a graphic account of a naval blockade of Salonica by the Slavs and mentions sea raids on the whole of Thessaly and near-by places and the Greek islands which depopulated many cities and regions. The Avars, in alliance with Slavs, Bulgars, and Gepids, besieged Constantinople itself by land and sea, while the Persians occupied Chalcedon. The records of events in the first part of the reign of Heraclius are fragmentary in the extreme, and the chronology in particular has been the subject of much debate.

Of the six following inscriptions the first is new, the other five are already known. These five are here republished because they all have some features in common with the first and appear to be worthy of fresh study.

I.: Small stele of grey marble belonging to Athanasios Dürekoglu; photographed and copied by me at Kula in June 1914. Height 66 cm.; width at top 32 cm., at bottom 42 cm.; thickness 6 cm. A clean break runs across the middle. Above the following text, which is perfectly preserved, is a sunken panel, on which are represented a pair of eyes and below these a pair of pigeons in low relief. (Plate XV, 1.)

This is one of those propitiatory monuments, found almost exclusively in Maeonia and S.W. Phrygia, which were dedicated by penitents at various sanctuaries to commemorate specific sins and the penalties inflicted by the gods.

Writing in the year 1817 Sir William Gell says: ‘The southern district of Maina has never been thoroughly explored by any English traveller except Leake.’ After nearly a century has elapsed this remark is still practically true. Pouqueville, Boblaye, and Le Bas have, among others, given us accounts of their travels in French. German research is represented by such names as Bursian, Curtius, Weil and Philippson, but with a single exception no account of the district has appeared in English since Leake's. The work in question was published in 1869, and is an edition of a selection from the diary kept by Lord Carnarvon on his travels in Maina and other parts of Greece, in the year 1839. References to archaeology are, however, few and far between in its pages, and it does not profess to aim at completeness, since Lord Carnarvon, who penetrated, it is true, as far as Taenarum, returned, as he went, by the track on the west coast, leaving the east coast of the peninsula unvisited.