Many vice-consuls of Britain's imperial past found archaeological work a welcome distraction from the tedium of their official duties in remote parts of the world. Some, indeed, like Charles Newton at Mytilene and George Dennis at Palermo, Benghazi, and Smyrna, regarded the excavation and study of the antiquities of the countries in which they were based as their prime duty. Thus, Frederick H. Crowe, a predecessor of Dennis at Benghazi, wrote the following letter to Lord John Russell, then Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs:

Bengazi 1 Sep. 1860.

My Lord,

I have the honour to report to your Lordship, that in the course of excavating at a place denominated by the Arabs ‘Soliman’, the site of the Ancient Greek Necropolis, situated four miles S.E. of the Town of Bengazi, I had the good fortune to discover at a distance of about 15 feet from the surface, a large vault built of solid masonry, and divided into 14 Compartments or rather Tombs.

Because Echelos carries off a bride Iasile in a four-horse chariot, on a relief found at a shrine near Phaleron, most writers have thought that this relief fixes the site of the Panathenaic Hippodrome. In fact it does the exact opposite. This bride is not coming home, she is going away: Echelos lives somewhere else, Phaleron is not his territory. It belongs to the family of an otherwise unknown nymph Iasile, and a host of gods and goddesses engaged in child-care, but not to Echelos. He is a stranger making a treaty and successfully buying favours. Note that the chariot proceeds steadily uphill, so away from the sea; Hermes is guiding it, so the gods approve. He has his foot on a small hill: we shall consider later where that may be. It is a gay relief with a reminiscence of the Parthenon horses. On the other side a lady, Artemis(?), receives a bearded man, a river-god and three nymphs—the wedding reception, solemnizing the treaty.

Shortly before the publication of BSA lxvi, containing my paper on ‘Cycladic Figurines and Their Derivatives in Crete’, I had the opportunity to examine a group of unpublished figurines in the Iraklion Museum. I was also able to visit the museum at Rethymno where important new figurines are on display. Altogether eight figurines may be added to the corpus presented in BSA lxvi, and it seems worthwhile publishing brief details of these and bringing the corpus up to date. In fact, however, both these eight and four other examples of Neolithic date enable us to add a little to our earlier discussion of Early Minoan figurines. Thus I offer below a brief description of the new figurines in each Type Group, and follow each Group entry with a short comment on the significance of the new entry.

The very familiarity of Greek art is apt to make us take its development very much for granted. It has a beginning in the isolated silhouettes and matchstick processions of Geometric art; progresses through an ever more faithful, that is to say illusionistic, rendering of the objects of the natural world to classic formalism; goes on to the remarkable technical proficiency of the third century B.C.; and finally declines in late Hellenistic sterilities before being absorbed and transformed by Imperial Rome and the Early Christians. It seems to be a sort of organic process: birth, flowering, and death follow in such a logical and apparently inevitable fashion that it is difficult not to be seduced by the metaphor.

I publish illustrations here of a Mycenaean vase that has for long been in the possession of the Department of Archaeology in the City of Birmingham Museum. It entered that collection in 1885 as part of a group of pottery found in Cyprus, without further details of source. All the rest of the material is certainly of Cypriot origin, and there must be a very strong presumption that our vase was found there, too. Since it belongs to a class of Mycenaean pottery of which very little has been reported from Cyprus, and is also of some little intrinsic interest, it seems appropriate that it should be more widely known. The vase may be described as follows:

Birmingham accession no. 1369/85. Stirrup jar, complete and intact. Ht. 0·25 m., diam. 0·203 m. Furumark would call the shape ‘globular-conical’ and ‘perked-up’. Shoulders and belly are spherical, but the lower walls straighten somewhat toward the foot. The clay is light buff in tone, with some inclusions, well fired, and has a smooth yellowish surface finish. The paint is rich brown to dark brown in colour, matt, and rather streaky on the solid areas; brush strokes are very evident. The spout is of concave profile, with wide mouth that has a well-formed bead lip; it just tops the disc of the false-neck, almost touching it. The broad handles are rather narrowly set on the shoulder. In the middle of the disc of the false-neck is a prominent plastic nipple, pierced before firing, that acts as air-hole. The bevelled foot is well proportioned. There is paint on the lip of the spout, whose root, as well as the root of the false-neck and the roots of the handles, is outlined with paint.

This is the first of three articles dealing with the settlement pottery of post-Minoan Knossos, dating from the tenth to the second century B.C., and coming from the British School's excavations of 1951–61. The most prolific source of this pottery is the major excavation on both sides of the Royal Road, directed by M. S. F. Hood in 1957–61. Here the post-Minoan overlay was in places over five metres deep, and good house-deposits were recovered of the Protogeometric, late Classical, and Hellenistic periods; there is also an excellent well-deposit of late Archaic times. For the other periods, the site produced only thin and scrappy rubbish-deposits, not associated with any contemporary architecture, and therefore less well stratified. But many of the gaps in the Royal Road sequence are more effectively filled by a number of well-deposits from minor excavations on the periphery of the town. Consequently, with the sole exception of the sixth century B.C. (which is still very meagrely represented), it is now possible to get a reasonably clear picture of the domestic pottery at every stage in the life of Hellenic Knossos.

The potsherd that is published here (Fig. 1 and Plate 30a) comes from Lord William Taylour's excavations in the ‘House with the Idols’ (‘Citadel House’) at Mycenae. It was found on 14 August 1968 in area 2, trench A, level 3. The find-context (given at the time of excavation but not subsequently studied) suggests a terminus ante quem of L.H. IIIC.

The piece (Mycenae Excavations no. 59–224) which is at present in the Archaeological Museum, Nauplia (inv. no. 14685), may be described as follows:

Sherd from body with start of neck of a large, closed vessel. Ridge on outside, at joint of body and neck. H.0·053 m. W.0·082 m. Th. (at lower edge) 0·007 m. Well levigated pinkish-buff clay, polished buff outside. Paint shaded brown, now rather badly worn off. Surface chipped in places.

Solid paint on outside of neck, including ridge at bottom. Below, part of a pictorial composition which consisted of a chariot, to left. All that remains of it are the driver's upper body and head and his hands holding two sets of reins. The driver's garment is drawn in outline and spotted. His neck and head are depicted carefully, also in outline; the top of the head was covered by paint-work subsequently applied to the neck of the vase. The hair is curled at the back and follows the outline of the ear. The eye is marked as a reserved, roughly almond-shaped area which, originally, probably contained a dot for the pupil; it fills the whole facial area between the forehead and hair.

The distinction between L.H. IIA and L.H. IIB as stylistic and historical phases was set out by Furumark over twenty years ago, but the terms have still not come into general use. Instead, L.H. II is treated as a unit, roughly equivalent to the fifteenth century B.C. Yet it is now generally agreed that there was an important historical ‘break’ in the middle of the century, marked by the destruction of many sites in Crete, which roughly coincides with the suggested division between L.H. IIA and L.H. IIB. The distinction between material preceding and following this ‘break’ on the mainland is likely to be of importance for the general history of the period.

In his discussion of these phases, Furumark was forced to rely very largely on tomb-groups, and his total material was not very great. He was conscious that additional evidence was needed for L.H. I and L.H. IIA, and commented on the general dearth of stratified material, accepting only one site, Korakou, as showing a L.H. I–II stratification.

The recent publication of a fragmentary Oxyrhynchus papyrus containing a deed of sale of a slave effected through a Rhodian bank, in the years between A.D. 238 and 244, sheds new light on the Rhodian banking system, of which hitherto little has been known, and it is worth while considering the information provided on this topic. The papyrus, carefully published by J. F. Oates, consists of two major fragments which do not join; fragment (a) contains all that survives of col. i, to which four hands contributed, and also the lower part of col. ii, while the right end of the upper part of col. ii is on the second fragment, (b), being in the same hand as the upper part of col. i; the lower part of col. ii is in the same three hands as is the lower part of col. i. The different hands represent the depositions of different persons. There is no lacuna between the end of fragment (a) and the beginning of fragment (b). These details are clearly visible on the photograph reproduced here by the kindness of the Managing Committee of the Egypt Exploration Society, to which I am much indebted. The papyrus is difficult to read in places, where the ink has faded, and the portions relevant to Rhodian matters are not all wholly clear.

A Three-Handled stirrup-jar decorated in the Marine Style of L.M. IB was recently recognized from fragments found in the East Apotheke of the Heraklion Museum (Plate 36). There is some uncertainty as to the provenance of this stirrup-jar because the name of the site had only been written on the box in chalk and is now totally erased except for a few smudges. However, the cases on either side of the relevant one are both labelled Pseira and some of the other fragments from the box itself are very like the known Pseira vases, e.g., the base of a cylindrical jar with a pattern similar to Pseira fig. 11.

Stirrup-jar with three arched, round handles rising above top of very short false neck. H. 0·196 m., D. of false mouth 0·035 m., D. body 0·243 m., D. base 0·08 m. Mouth and most of base restored. Pinkish clay, pink-buff slip, black-brown paint. Decoration: four argonauts swimming to the right amidst rock and seaweed; tritons between the argonauts, single or in groups; sea-urchin on disc of false neck which is monochrome; handles probably striped horizontally; four bands around lower body to base.

The occurrence of formulae in Attic inscriptions is, of course, universally recognized, although it has perhaps become clear that an over-rigid approach towards them, particularly in fifth- and early fourth-century examples, is unwise. The usefulness of such formulae for restoration also depends to a certain extent on the volume and the spread of dated, or approximately dated, material available. In the case of citizenship grants the situation is particularly good since there not only exists a reasonably large and widespread set of more or less closely dated documents but the decrees themselves contain a peculiar feature which renders them especially susceptible to restoration. Indeed, there are some grounds for regarding decrees that record grants of citizenship as forming a special category among honorific decrees. The reason is that the full formula for recording the grant always consists of more than one distinct clause or element. There are always at least two clauses involved, each of which (apart from the simple statement of the grant) refers to a specific and necessary point of procedure; and each of these elements of the full formula has its own individual formula in the sense of having a distinct method of expression. Thus, in citizenship decrees, even when the form of expression within the individual elements is open to variation, the general, or over-all, formula for the grant remains the same in a given period, in that the individual elements themselves remain. For instance, in the earliest grants the total granting formula embraced two separate elements, namely the statement of the grant, and the enrolment of the recipient into a deme and tribe and phratry. Both of these elements could be (and were) expressed in slightly different ways, but the two points themselves are always present in the record. So the over-all granting formula is the same.

The excavations conducted by Payne from 1930 to 1933 at the Corinthian sanctuary of Hera on the tip of the Perachora peninsula have led to extensive revisions of early Corinthian and Megarian history. The main aim of Payne was to extend our knowledge of the early art and archaeology of Corinth, and in this respect his expectations of the site were brilliantly fulfilled; but the use that has been made of the evidence uncovered at the Heraeum has been much more wide-ranging. Payne himself (Perachora i. 21 f.) believed that although the sanctuary was situated in Corinthian territory the Argives played a central role in the foundation of its cult. Dunbabin (JHS lxviii (1948) 59 ff.) followed Payne in this conclusion and was thus led to reconsider the question of the foundation of Dorian Corinth; relying heavily on the supposedly Argive character of many of the finds from the Heraeum, he concluded that the city of Corinth itself was founded by Argives. Hammond, however, went further (BSA xlix (1954) 93 ff.). He argued, partly from the cult history of the sanctuary itself, and partly from indications in the literary sources, that the Heraeum was not Corinthian at all during the first years of its life, but Megarian; and that after a period of uncertainty in the late eighth century, when sometimes Corinth and sometimes Megara controlled the site, it finally became a Corinthian possession and the Megarians were never again able to make good their claim to the territory.

Of the many sites surveyed by Helen Waterhouse and R. Hope Simpson in Laconia one of the most outstanding is that of Ayios Stephanos (BSA lv (1960) 97–100). It is about 45 km. SSE. of Sparta and distant just under two km. from the sea (PLATE 39a). At one time it undoubtedly was a promontory jutting out into the sea, for in many parts of the Mediterranean the land has risen since Classical times. The site is a flat-topped hill, the habitable part of which covers an area of roughly 45,000 square metres. It is steep on the north and east. To the west it links up with the foothills of the Taygetus range. In recent years the hill has been used for pasturage, but at one time it was almost certainly cultivated and the plough has done a lot of damage to the underlying walls and burials.

During Professor J. D. Evans's excavation at Knossos in 1970, I was responsible for two small investigations which the British School had been asked to make by the Ephor of Antiquities at Heraklion, Dr. St. Alexiou. Excavation in both places produced results of interest which merit publication, though a full discussion of them is beyond my scope.

In April 1971 remains of ancient buildings were brought to light and partly destroyed by a bulldozer in the south-west corner of a field below Makryteikhos village at Knossos. The field lies against the west bank of the Kairatos stream (fig. 1), immediately north of the path which runs down to the stream from the village. The owner, Mr. P. Triandhaphyllou, had put in the bulldozer to prepare the ground for planting. At the request of Dr. St. Alexiou rescue excavations were carried out on 3–4, 6–7, and 12 May by P. Warren on behalf of the School, and the site was afterwards filled in to leave the field free for planting.