Laconian figurines have been found on four sites at or in the neighbourhood of Sparta: by the British excavations at the Sanctuary of Artemis Orthia, at the Menelaion, and on the Acropolis at the Sanctuary of Athena of the Brazen House: and by the Greek and, subsequently, the German excavations at the Amyklaion. So far as I know only three archaic Laconian figurines have been found on sites which are not Laconian. Of these, two are from Tegea, a site which was open to Laconian, Argive and Corinthian influences; these two objects will be mentioned below. The third is the late archaic terracotta head from Olympia, which Langlotz classes as Sicyonian, but which is much more akin to late archaic Laconian heads. One would expect that seventh-century figurines of Laconian style would have been found at Tarentum, but as almost no archaic terracottas from that site have been published it is impossible to say whether such exist or no: the few I have seen in Berlin do not present any striking similarity with those from Laconia, although one of them is akin to the Cretan heads of about 625.

Nobody flashed a shield at the Battle of Marathon, for it is scientifically impossible: hoplite shields were curved, and you cannot reflect a flash from a curved surface. The shield can only have been waved (as Herodotus says), making it a short range signal, not from far-off traitors in Athens but traitors at Marathon, signalling the movements of their own army to the enemy. The Persians' voyage round Sounion was long and tedious, and the quickest way to Athens would be to land as soon as possible after Marathon, at Loutsa, and for the cavalry to dash for the city. The signal warned that this route was blocked, hence Plan B—Sounion.

Duncan Mackenzie's interpretation of the Phylakopi stratigraphy, which he presented in 1904 as the final chapter of the excavation report, continues to structure discussion of the site's history. Mackenzie proposed a sequence of three ‘Cities’, which are seen to correspond to EC III, MC, and LC periods of occupation respectively. This paper examines Mackenzie's interpretation in light of his own notes taken during excavation, and the results of subsequent excavations undertaken by Dawkins and Droop in 1911 and Renfrew from 1974 to 1977. It concludes that while the urban sequence at Phylakopi is probably more complex than Mackenzie appreciated, his suggestion of a three City succession is broadly correct, but that the Second City should be redated to MC–LC II, and the Third City to LC III.

Η ερμηνεία του Duncan Mackenzie για την στρωματογραφία της Φυλακωπής, που παρουσίασε το 1904 στο τελευταίο κεφάλαιο της σχετικής ανασκαφικής έκθεσης, εξακολουθεί να προκαλεί συζήτηση για θην ιστορία της τέσης. O Mackenzie πρότεινε τη διαδοχή τριών ‘Πόλεων’, οι οποίες φαίνεται ότι αντιστοιχούν στις IIK III, MK και YK περιόδους κατοίκησης. Το εν λόγω άρθρο εξετάζει την ερμηνεία του Mackenzie σύμφωνα με τις προσωπικές του σημειώσεις κατά την ανασκαφή και τα αποτελέσματα μεταγενέστερων ανασκαφικών ερευνών, που διεξήχτησαν το 1911 από τους Dawkins και Droop και την περίοδο 1974–1977 από τον Renfrew. Συμπεραίνεται ότι ενώ η διαδοχή των οικιστικών φάσεων στη Φυλακωπή είναι πιθανώς περισσότερο περίπλοκη από την αρχική εκτίμηση του Mackenzie, η πρότασή του για την ύπαρξη τριών διαδοχικών Πόλεων είναι γενικά σωστή. Ωστόσο, η Δεύτερη Πόλη θα πρέπει να επαναχρονολογηθεί στη MK–YK II και η Τρίτη στην YK III.

Perhaps the most popular vase shape in Euboea in the fourth century was the lidded lekanis. A number of specimens, decorated with floral motives on the lid and simple leaves or linear patterns on the receptacles, may be seen in BSA lv, pls. 54–57 passim. They show considerable variety in the shape of the knobs and in the treatment of the handles, but the receptacles remain fundamentally the same. Akin to these are little bowls of similar shape, lidded, but without handles. Such are the vases of a kernos of unknown provenience in Athens with a vaguely anthropomorphic central handle consisting of a long loop surmounted by a moulded head and with small arm-like projections recalling those of a herm (Plate 1, 1). The lids of three of the four little vases are preserved, the two nearest the handle having horizontal rims, while the two outer vases both had lids with rims turning vertically down, as is shown by the one extant lid and by the flanges on both the receptacles. The knobs of the two lids with horizontal rims are of a shape similar to the stemmed foot of a cup or dish; the surviving lid with down-turned rim has a ring like the footring of a stemless cup to serve as a knob. Each kind of knob, stemmed or stemless, functioned as a foot when the lid was set upside down on the table and became a dish. The low footring knobs were not unknown in Athens, but they were commoner in Euboea. One was noticed in BSA lv. 212, no. 8 on a lid, not figured, belonging to the Bonn group of floral black-figure, which is undoubtedly of Euboean, and very probably of Chalcidian manufacture. We shall see more of them later on.

The first substantial corpus of developed and complex stone vases emerged on the Greek mainland in the shaft graves of Mycenae (Middle Helladic III – Late Helladic I) and was certainly, in large part, of Minoan origin. However, a Mycenaean industry appeared in the Late Helladic III period, which suggests a link with Minoan technology. Indeed, there is an extremely strong possibility that expatriate craftsmen had gradually transmitted their knowledge to local Mycenaean apprentices. A technological study of a corpus of 24 stone vases from Mycenae, dated to the Late Helladic I/II–III, enables the identification and reconstruction of the manufacturing processes and techniques involved in mainland production. It appears to be the case that a great part of the Mycenaean know-how derives from contact with Minoan craftsmanship. However, if a large number of technical elements (use of tubular drilling for the hollowing process, production of the vessels in several parts) may come from a Minoan heritage, the Mycenaeans seem to have quickly developed their own approach – with their own technological emphases, serving purely Mycenaean forms. The vase, based on separately made elements, was a Minoan approach but became properly a mainland concept, which appeared far less commonly in other regions of the eastern Mediterranean. Similarly, the single-tool approach developed for the drilling process (for hollowing the interior of the vessels and for cutting the inlay decoration of the exterior), entirely based on the use of the tubular drill, is purely a native one and is uncommon among eastern Mediterranean vessel traditions. A technological study indicates also the possible coexistence of different types of organisation in the Mycenaean workshops. Thus, the manufacturing processes used, as well as the organisation of the production, are distinct from those of other eastern Mediterranean centres, including Crete.

This article contains epigraphically based studies which aim to bring increased order to the chronology and prosopography of Roman Sparta. It is concluded that only one occurrence of the nomen Aurelius can be assigned with any confidence to the period before the Constitutio Antoniniana. A dedication for Septimius Severus and his family is discussed. Epigraphic evidence for M. Aurelius Aristocles of Taenarum and his family is presented. An epigraphic reference to the ‘Pitanate Lochos’ recruited by Caracalla is discussed. The dating of the occasions when the god Lycurgus is attested as eponymous patronomos is discussed, when it is argued that Woodward's dating for the fourth to eleventh patronomates (c. 180–90) is some fifty to sixty years too early. The career of the champion runner P. Aelius Alcandridas is elucidated. Texts referring to the sculptor Demetrius are discussed. An account is given of priests of the imperial cult at Sparta under the Severi, fifteen priests being identified. A list of Spartan patronomoi of the third century is compiled. In an appendix a revised text of IG v. 1. 168 + 603 is proposed.

This article originated from a suggestion by Dr. Chadwick, that it would be useful to those studying the Linear B archives from Knossos to have a list of sites which archaeologists believe to have been occupied at the time of the destruction of the Palace in whose ruins the tablets were found.

An opportunity to follow up this suggestion came when the author was invited to contribute to a volume of studies in honour of Professor Doro Levi. Unfortunately the study was not finished in time, but it remains, as intended, a small offering to a senior Italian colleague.

Excavations at the Sparta theatre were resumed in 1992: the objective was to survey it and clarify its history. Nine trenches were opened and a catalogue of architectural blocks compiled. A trench in the sw orchestra revealed two staircases; while the seats of honour, the walkway behind, and two or three rows of benches above are preserved, the remainder of the theatre was severely damaged in the 9th–13th centuries. The diazoma's foundations were revealed; below it were ten radial staircases, above seventeen. The lower cavea had thirty-one rows, the upper nineteen. At the top, rows 17–19 rested on concrete over an inner radial wall of concrete-bonded stones; there are traces of a Doric colonnade around the walkway here. The upper cavea yielded pottery suggesting an initial construction under Eurykles (c.30–20 BC); no certain evidence of an earlier theatre has been found. The stage building's architecture suggests Flavian and Severan reconstructions and later repairs. The site's use as a theatre ended c. AD 400, but finds indicate early Byzantine continuity and three later occupation phases (9th–13th centuries). Sculptures found include a statuette of Apollo or Dionysos, an Antonine female portrait (priestess?), and an important late Roman male portrait head.

There are several explanations current about the origin of the triglyph. First, that the frieze of triglyph and metope started from a decorative feature of Mycenaean art and survived—invisibly to us–until eventually Doric architecture emerged. Secondly, that triglyphs are the fossilised remains of barred wooden windows, which early Greeks needed but their successors did not. Thirdly, that triglyphs are the flattened vestiges of an upper row of columns, abandoned by the timid masons of the seventh century. Fourthly, that the triglyph represents the end or a facing of the end of a wooden beam, this though in all ascertainable early instances the beams run from the course above the triglyph. Fifthly, and liable to the same objection, that the metopes were originally the ends of beams and the triglyphs bars between them. To each of these explanations—and probably to any other that has been or can be devised—there are serious objections. But since the treatment and the prominence of the orthodox triglyph give it an appearance of being an important structural member and particularly one of wood, the most popular explanation is the fourth, which derives the triglyph from the wooden beam. If this is accepted, the argument may reasonably be pushed further.

In a brief note, the excavations are described and the pottery studies by D. M. Bailey and G. D. R. Sanders are introduced.

A fragment of an archaic temple model from the British School's early excavations at the sanctuary of Artemis Orthia at Sparta is published. It is suggested here that its decoration represents a timber-framed building. Support for this argument is found in the similar construction technique used for the early 7th-cent. temple of Artemis Orthia. Its contribution to the debate concerning the evolution of the developed Doric order is considered. In further discussion of the significance of votive ‘house models’, doubts are expressed about the universal applicability of recent explanations linking them with female cults explicitly associated with protection of the household.

At one time it was generally assumed, even by distinguished Byzantinists, that the Turkish conquest of Constantinople in 1453 put a sudden stop to the production of all objects of quality in the East Christian world, and that after that date Byzantine art at once degenerated into a peasant art throughout the whole of the area touched by the Turks. Recent research has, however, led to some modification of this view, and though work of the same superb quality as that produced in the great middle period of Byzantine art was not executed, we now know that in addition to painted icons, such things as embroideries, carved reliquaries, crosses of chased metal work or champlevé enamel and objects in bone or even ivory, were produced, which were by no means negligible from the artistic standpoint. Their production continued, moreover, through the sixteenth and earlier seventeenth centuries; only after that date did Christian art in Greece and the Balkans assume an essentially ‘peasant’ character. It is indeed to the sixteenth century that the greater number of painted icons that are now to be found in museums and private collections in Greece are to be assigned, and though there was much hack-work, paintings of very high quality were also produced amongst them.

A small group of note-books containing memoranda, itineraries, copies of inscriptions, and miscellaneous sketches by Sir William Gell was recently acquired by the British School at Athens, and it has seemed worth while to publish the following brief account of their contents, together with a rather fuller description of the two most important features which they present. These are (1) the copies which Gell made of numerous inscriptions, and (2) his own brief diary for the first part of his mission to Asia Minor on behalf of the Dilettanti Society in 1812—13.

In the course of a search for tombs in the Knossos area during the spring of 1951 I noticed some large blocks of limestone masonry with curved edges that had just been removed from a newly planted vineyard, the property of Georgios Kargatzes, near the top of the hill forming the southern end of the long ridge on the northern tip of which stands the Isopata Royal Tomb. The site is about 250 metres north-west of the Zafer Papoura cemetery of Late Minoan tombs dug by Evans in 1904, and at the bottom of the slope to the west is a high bank with important Geometric tombs (Knossos Survey 15), explored by Hogarth during the first year of the excavations at Knossos in 1900.

The curving blocks, together with the situation on the top of a hill less than half a kilometre south of the Kefala tholos tomb (Knossos Survey 8), excavated by Mr. R. W. Hutchinson in 1939, immediately raised hopes that another tholos tomb might await discovery here; and the fragments of Minoan pottery everywhere on and below the surface encouraged this belief. Dr. N. Platon, Ephor of Antiquities for Crete, visited the site and granted permission for the School to make trials to discover from what the blocks came. The Director of the School, Mr. J. M. Cook, gave his sanction for the work and asked me to undertake it. The plans were drawn by Mr. Piet de Jong, then the School's Curator at Knossos; the drawings of the vases are by Miss Susan Wood.

Vincenzo Coronelli (1650–1718), cosmographer to the Venetian republic, produced two books illustrating the towns and fortresses taken from the Ottoman Turks by the Venetians during their second conquest of the Peloponnese (1685–90). These were issued in numerous editions and translations in 1686–7, and formed the basis for other cartographic works. There were many variants of each plate, and the engravings have increasingly become separated from the books in which they were published. The problem is compounded by the many variants of the illustrations, and because different illustrations may exist for a town. By examining the known variants of one town and relating each to the edition in which it appeared, and by a bibliographical examination of the editions, we can determine which illustrations belong to which edition and can distinguish the political and historical bases on which Coronelli changed his illustrations from edition to edition.

In the last volume of the Annual a report was given on the work done at Haliartos in 1926. It was not possible at that time to publish the excavation exhaustively as the finds had not been thoroughly examined, but I have recently made a further study of them, and have prepared this supplementary paper to bring the publication up to date. The finds are here catalogued and discussed under their several sections, and the conclusions derived from them are set out in the summary at the end.

Two vases reputedly from the village of Vrondama, located some 7km. SW of Geraki in Central Laconia, add significantly to the corpus of Laconian Dark Age pottery, since they represent both ends of the chronological spectrum. The vases are an askos and oinochoe. The askos can be dated to the very early Dark Ages, perhaps even to the transition from LH IIIC to DA, and does much to narrow the gap in Laconia between the end of IIIC and the beginning of DA. The oinochoe, on the other hand, may serve as a transition between the end of DA and the beginning of Laconian LG, for parallels, primarily from Argos, provide a general chronological framework of MG II. The oinochoe is, therefore, as important a transtitional piece for the end of Laconian DA as the askos is for the beginning.

The triglyph problem which arose at the corners of a Doric building, and was held by Vitruvius to be responsible for the disuse of the Doric order in Roman times, has for many years been discussed by archaeologists. The best short explanation of the difficulties involved is probably that by Robertson. The much more complex problems which are met at a re-entrant angle in the Doric order, have, on the other hand, received little attention, for such angles do not occur in temples, the type of building which has been studied most thoroughly. They do, however, appear fairly frequently in more utilitarian buildings such as stoas and palaistras, and various treatments of them were evolved.

The Roman ‘Agora’ of Gytheum appears to be a large compound with an interior peristyle; its width is 52 m and its length at least 61 m. Excavations have revealed the remains of the north-east corner and a portion of the west wing. The extant architectural blocks allow the reconstruction of the colonnades. Column shafts were made of local red limestone and at least some of them were crowned with lotus-and-acanthus capitals. Three different interaxial column spacings are present. A single column must have stood on each corner of the peristyle. The style of the column capital suggests a date after the year ad 100. The entablature is almost identical, in both style and dimensions, to the one found on the Captives' Facade at Corinth. The inscription on two epistyles reveals the private dedication of an exedra to theoi Sebastoi and the city. Most probably the exedra was behind the colonnaded space; the mention of theoi Sebastoi might suggest imperial cult either in the exedra alone or both in the exedra and in the entire colonnaded compound. Quite possibly, and following A. Themos' suggestion, a large part of the colonnaded compound that is conventionally termed the ‘Agora’ can be identified with the Sebasteum/Caesareum of Gytheum; this latter structure is attested in other inscriptions from the city.