Two seasons of fieldwalking were undertaken in the environs of the city of Praisos in Eastern Crete in 1993 and 1994. This is a preliminary report on the results. The topography of the area is described, as are the survey methods used. Finds include sites of FN/EM I date; MM ‘megalithic’ structures and one possible sanctuary; few remains of Neopalatial date. Attention is concentrated on the LM III, PG, G and Orientalising periods which saw a movement of settlement from the refuge settlement of Kypia above Kalamafki to Praisos itself. The urban survey of 1994 indicates that Praisos was a considerable settlement well before the Classical period, and there seems to be some overlap in the periods in which Kypia and Praisos were occupied. Further work was also undertaken on the Classical and Hellenistic periods in the Praisos area. Later periods have proven more difficult to pin down through analysis of their surface remains.

Since the publication of Brückner's Der Friedhof am Eridanos in 1909, describing twenty grave enclosures of fourth-century date aligning the so-called Weststraβe or Street of Tombs in the Kerameikos, numerous other periboloi have been discovered, not least in the course of rescue excavations carried out in and around Athens.

This paper represents an attempt to catalogue topographically all the periboloi which have come to light in Attica of Classical date. Although the reports of their excavation are often tantalizingly brief, such excavations as those conducted at Rhamnous under V. Petrakos of a group of periboloi extending for a distance of over a mile and a half, are beginning to clarify the more fragmentary impression which one inevitably obtains from Athens itself.

In my recent book Epirus, published in June 1967, I have dealt with the finds from the tumuli of North Epirus at Vajzë, Vodhinë, Bodrishtë, and Kakavi which were excavated in 1954 and 1955 and reported in Albanian in the Buletin per Shkencat Shoquërore (referred to hereafter as BUSS) 1956, 1. 180 ff.; 1957, 2. 76 ff.; and 1959, 2. 190 ff. It was in 1963 that I first heard of this journal and late in 1964 that I obtained an offprint of the Vajzë report through the kindness of the excavator, Professor Frano Prendi. He dated the tumuli and their contents to the transition from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age and to the early centuries of the Iron Age, but I have advanced the view in my book that the earliest of these tumuli and the earliest burials in such tumuli date to the Middle Helladic period. When this went to press in December 1964, I was able to publish also a few objects from the tumuli of the Mati valley which were illustrated in the same journal for 1955, and appeared to be of Middle Helladic date but had been dated by the excavator to the end of the Bronze Age at the earliest. Late in 1965 I was sent by Professor Frano Prendi a copy of a new Albanian periodical Studia Albanica, no. i of 1964. Here the same dates were given for the tumuli of North Epirus and of the Mati valley but reference was made for the first time in my experience to a Middle Helladic dating of tumuli and of objects which had been found at Pazhok. This material was too late to be included in my book. As the evidence at Pazhok is conclusive for the Middle Helladic dating, I give a summary of the brief report, which this time was in French, and I reproduce the illustrations which were not of a high standard. The reports of all these excavations have escaped the notice of scholars in the western countries, so far as I am aware. The Pazhok report runs as follows (with my numbering of paragraphs and a few comments).

The purpose of this article is to correct and expand our understanding of an interrelated group of socially prominent families from Roman Sparta and Epidaurus. Part I publishes an inscription from Sparta, dating to about 240, which attests new members of the Spartan families of the Claudii and the Pomponii: respectively Claudia Tyrannis, a great-granddaughter of the senator Tib. Claudius Brasidas, and C. Pomponius Aristeas qui et Pericles, her husband. At the same time, a revised account is offered of the Claudii and of a further four Spartan families to which they were related: the Memmii, the Voluseni, the Aelii, and the Pompeii. Part II re-examines the evidence for the Epidaurian family of the Statilii. Apart from the new inscription, more recent work on the epigraphic corpora from Sparta and the Asclepieum, the possibility of reinterpreting the older material, and the need to take hitherto neglected documents into account, together seem to justify a fresh treatment of these families. The resulting study, as well as providing up-to-date family histories, includes many corrections on detailed points of local epigraphy, chronology, and prosopography.

Everyone who has the slightest acquaintance with the Crimea at the present time, and especially with the economic conditions which prevail there, is thoroughly aware of its intimate connexion, both economic and social, with the southern coast of the Black Sea—with Samsun, Eregli, Sinope, Kerasund, Trebizond and other towns. Great masses of workmen from these parts flood the cities of the Crimea. Practically all shipments by sea in vessels of small displacement are carried out by the owners of feluccas, who hail from the municipal centres of ancient Pontus and from the neighbouring sea-towns of what was once Bithynia. A glance at the map is sufficient to show that there is no casual connexion here; the close interconnexion between the shores of the Crimea and the southern coast of the Black Sea, which is almost visible with the naked eye from the southernmost point of the Crimea, has been brought about by the natural conditions of the locality. The decline in the prosperity of the southern Turkish coast of the Black Sea and the great prosperity of the Crimea in the years immediately preceding the war were the chief reasons why the Crimea played the part of employer, and the sea towns of the southern coast the part of supplier of labour. They provided as well the necessary tonnage for coastwise shipping, mostly in the shape of small sailing vessels. Such could not always be the case, nor indeed have such conditions continuously prevailed, although, generally speaking, similar relations must needs be established quite independent of the fortune assigned by history to the districts with which we are now dealing.

This article examines the methods of surface treatment of the Neolithic vessels from northern Greece. The work is based on the study of a large sample of ceramics, covering the whole span of the Neolithic, from Macedonia and Thrace. Macroscopic study of the material was complemented by microscopic examination (SEM and petrographic analysis) and retiring tests. The results are compared with data from other technological analyses of Neolithic vessels from northern Greece. Apart from identifying, in some cases for the first time, methods of surface treatment and materials used by the potters of these regions, the present study considers the changes in surface treatment and firing techniques through time.

Among over 1800 boxes of Sir Arthur Evans's finds now stored in the Stratigraphical Museum at Knossos, at least 150 contain Greek pottery from Subminoan to Classical. A systematic study of this material, in relation to its recorded find spots, throws new light on the eastern part of the early Greek town, bordering the site of the Minoan Palace. Above the Palace itself, fresh evidence is produced, and fresh interpretation offered, for the Greek sanctuary described by Evans. In its immediate surroundings, there are signs of busy domestic and industrial life in the early Greek town above the South-West Houses, the West Court, the Theatral Area, and the Pillared Hall outside the North Entrance to the Palace. Greek occupation is also noted above the House of Frescoes, the Little Palace and the Royal Villa. A wider aim of this article is to trace the limits of the early Greek town of Knossos, both of its original Early Iron Age nucleus surviving from Late Minoan times, and of its spacious extension towards the north in the late eighth and seventh centuries BC.

The existence of agonistic festivals in Boiotia in the first half of the first century B.C. is well attested by inscriptions, many of them collected in the pages of IG vii, which appeared in 1892, and others published as a result of subsequent archaeological discoveries. Foremost in this field were the French scholars who conducted important excavations in the neighbourhood of Thespiai, at the Ptoïon and elsewhere. In his IG commentaries Dittenberger laid the foundations of a relative chronology for these inscriptions, and many supplementary details have been added from time to time by various French scholars. The value of this epigraphical evidence for an understanding of Boiotian affairs in the first half of the first century B.C. can be still further enhanced if the chronological relationships of the inscriptions are defined more precisely, and especially if it can be shown which of them belong to the period before, and which to the period after, the Mithridatic War.

The lead figurines from recent excavations at the shrine of Helen and Menelaus are discussed, excluding those in the form of wreaths, which were well over half the total of almost 6,000. Five hundred and sixty-one moulds are distinguished, divided between sixty-one varieties. A chronology is attempted on the basis of three methods, stratigraphy, seriation, and typology and a tentative sequence is proposed.

The site of Kouphovouno, just south of Sparta, is one of the main Neolithic sites in Laconia. It was first settled in the Middle Neolithic period and developed into a large village with remains occupying some 4–5 hectares. A joint team from the British School at Athens and the Ecole française d'Athènes carried out excavations at the site in 2001–6. There is evidence for occupation during the Bronze Age, and for an extensive Late Roman villa, but this article concentrates on the chronology of the site during the Middle and Late Neolithic phases. The evidence from stratigraphic sequences, pottery typology, seriation and Bayesian analysis of the radiocarbon dates is brought together to present a detailed chronological sequence covering the period c.5800–5000 bc. In particular the analysis relies on the results from two deep soundings, one excavated in Area C carried down to the natural sediments underlying the site and exposing the earliest period of occupation, and the second in Area G covering the later Middle Neolithic and much of the Late Neolithic phase. The findings from Kouphovouno are placed more generally in the context of finds from other sites in the Peloponnese and in particular in relation to the important sequence from Franchthi Cave. On the basis of the evidence it is argued that the transition from Middle Neolithic to Late Neolithic in southern Greece was not abrupt, as had previously been thought, but showed a gradual evolution. This finding has implications for our understanding of the process of transformation that southern Greece underwent in the course of the later sixth millennium bc.

At Easter 1981, as part of a joint Greek-British investigation of the region of ‘Toumba’ at Lefkandi in Euboea, a further area of the known cemetery there was excavated. The Greek Archaeological Service was represented by Mrs. E. Touloupa, previously Ephor of Euboea, and the British School by M. R. Popham and L. H. Sackett: the operation was under the general supervision of the Ephor, Mr. P. Kalligas.

Since the results of the previous excavations in this and the other cemeteries have recently been published with a full commentary, we have decided to give a quick and more summary account of the new finds as a supplement to the main publication to which reference is made for detailed discussion.

My first literary pilgrimage to the Ionian islands took place six years ago. I still find them an attractive field for research, and the present paper records observations made among them during two very pleasant summers. In this connection I would recall the fact that both Professor Chadwick and Professor Childe have indicated the importance of a study of North-West Greece for the better understanding of the coming of the Greeks.

This article should have been published in BSA xxxviii with the rest of the Karphi material. That it was not was due to the fact that in 1939 the pottery was insufficiently mended for drawing and photography. Most of the text was written by the beginning of 1940 and approved by John Pendlebury before his death. I can only apologize for subsequent delays and admit that I have forgotten much which might have been relevant.

Methods: The pottery from each room and each strosis was carefully collected and labelled. During the first two seasons it was then brought to Tzermiadho for study, but in 1939 arrangements were made for dealing with it on the site, which greatly simplified the work.

At first sherds were washed by women from the village, but the difficulties of washing were so great that it was soon decided that all those that were painted, or probably painted, would have to be washed by one of ourselves if their patterns were to be preserved. Even so there were many instances where no treatment which we could devise would remove the mud without also removing the colour, if not the entire surface. Eventually only such coarse sherds as seemed to be worth making up, or to represent new types, were washed at all, since brushing in plain water, which was all that these would stand, had so little effect that sorting was just as easy without it.

The morphology of the Vouliagmeni Lake and Perachora coasts is the result of seismic uplifts with a cumulative amplitude of 3–4 m in the last 6,000 years; there is also evidence of a transient seismic subsidence at around 5,000 BP. These results are consistent with excavation data indicating a seismic destruction of an EH I site followed by land subsidence. This led to the abandonment of the site, which was reoccupied when the land was uplifted again.

Images of bears are found as dedications in only five sanctuaries. The article considers the circumstances of this; particularly the belief that this animal was an emblem and pattern of motherhood.

The material for a study of Lakonian pottery may be roughly divided into two classes; first, the vases scattered through the museums of Europe, mostly found outside Greece, in tolerably good preservation, but covering a comparatively short period of time; secondly, the mass of pottery unearthed during the excavations of the British School at Athens in Lakonia itself. The latter consists mainly of fragments, but represents the continuous product of about four centuries, and in the sanctuary of Orthia we have the inestimable advantages offered by a well-stratified site.

In the store-rooms of the British Museum is kept a fragment belonging to a lead plaque which bears the traces of an inscription written boustrophedon in the Corinthian alphabet. This lead plaque was part of the collection of J. Woodhouse, which was made in Corfu, and following the death of the collector in 1866 was bequeathed to the British Museum.

In 1868 the plaque was catalogued and described in the Museum's Register. According to a sketch, also included, it is clear that at that time more of it was preserved and that besides the upper and lower edge possibly the right end was also retained. It was described as containing seven lines of a boustrophedon inscription, of which only the first, second, and seventh lines were transcribed. The inscription was incomprehensible, and that may have been the reason for its not being published hitherto.

More than 100,000 lead figurines are reported to have been found in the sanctuary of Artemis Orthia at Sparta. It has been suggested that these mass-produced votives were obtained from locally mined lead. Lead votives in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, were selected as representative of each ‘layer’ from the British excavations of the early twentieth century. Lead isotope analysis of the votives was conducted in the Oxford Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art and demonstrated that the lead was apparently derived from Lavrion as a by-product of silver extraction. There is a possibility that Attic silver, as well as lead, could have been used in Archaic Laconia.

A final report is presented here on the excavation of four Areas at the prehistoric site of Kouphovouno, Sparta, Lakonia. Areas A and D were excavated as trials in 2001 and lie outside the land purchased by the BSA for the main campaigns, so they could not be excavated further, whilst Areas E and F had extensive deposits of historic date and were not further explored as being outside the remit of the main Kouphovouno Project. The excavations have yielded important Neolithic and Early Helladic II deposits, plus Bronze Age burials and later Roman remains. After summarising the aims of the Project and mentioning earlier work at the site, the report gives an account of the stratigraphy and finds and includes specialist reports on the human and animal bones, the ceramics, the chipped and ground stone and other finds. Also discussed is the relationship between the surface remains reported in BSA 99 and the excavated material.

An intensive archaeological survey covering the entire extent of the island of Antikythera has recently revealed a sequence of prehistoric activity spanning the later Neolithic to Late Bronze Age, with cultural affiliations that variously link its prehistoric communities with their neighbours to the north, south and east. Here we present and discuss the results of a programme of both macroscopic and petrographie study of the prehistoric ceramics from Antikythera that defines a considerably varied group of fabrics and explores their implications with regard to regional potting traditions, on-island production versus imports, and changing patterns of human activity on the island through time.

Μια εντατική επιφανειακή έρευνα που κάλυψε το σύνολο της έκτασης των Aντικυθήρων αποκάλυψε πρόσφατα μια ακολουθία προïστορικής δραστηριότητας που χρονολογείται από την προχωρημένη Nεολιθική μέχρι την ´Yστερη Eποχή του Xαλκού, και αντανακλά ποικίλες πολιτιστικές σχέσεις των προïστορικών κοινοτήτων του νησιού με γειτονικές περιοχές στα βόρεια, νότια καν ανατολικά. Eσώ παρουσιάςουμε και (τυςητάμε τα αποτελέσματα ενός προγράμματος μακροσκοπικής και πετρογραφικής μελέτης της προïστορικής κεραμικής από τα Aντικύθηρα, που προσδιορίςει μια σημαντική ποικνλία κεραμικών υλών και διερευνά τη σημασία τους σε σχέση με τις τοπικές παραδόσενς κεραμικής στην ευρύτερη περιοχή του Aιγαίου, την αντιδιαςτολή εγχώρνας παραγωγής καν ενσαγωγών, και τις δναχρονικές μεταβολές στο χαρακτήρα και την ένταση της ανθρώπινης δραστηριότητας στο νησί.