Stylistic reasons are given for believing that many of the Hadra hydriae found in the Hellenistic cemeteries of Alexandria were made in Crete.

Analyses of the clay compositions of a group of Hadra vases are compared with control samples from Cretan sites and the Nile Valley. The results suggest, together with the stylistic evidence, that Crete is a likely home for the workshops producing Hadra vases.

The arrangement of the small finds in the tombs at Lefkandi is described, tomb by tomb. Find positions are interpreted in relation to the probable placing of the burials.

The archaeological evidence for the sack of Smyrna is considered, together with later material. It is argued that this confirms a date for the sack around 600 BC, early in Alyattes' reign.

Pottery from Sparta and Amyclae dating to the tenth and ninth centuries BC is discussed, the label ‘Dark Age’ rather than ‘Protogeometric’ being used because it belongs to a western Greek Koine which differs slightly from pottery traditionally considered protogeometric. All diagnostic pieces from the major collections are considered, and those important for providing evidence on shape or decoration are catalogued. Clay and shapes are described, together with decoration.

Considerable quantities of Mycenaean pottery were recovered by the late Sir Leonard Woolley from the site of Tell Atchana (Alalakh) in the Hatay province of Turkey, close to the Syrian border. This paper brings together the largely unpublished, Mycenaean pictorial pottery from the site. The Atchana material contributes examples both of standard chariot scenes and other less familiar themes to the corpus of pictorial pottery. The question of the dating of early pictorial pottery is briefly reconsidered. In addition to its artistic and chronological interest, the material from Tell Atchana also highlights the existence of not inconsiderable quantities of Mycenaean pictorial pottery in the Near East as well as in Cyprus.

It is argued that the painting in the Stoa Poikile described by Pausanias as an engagement between Athenians and Spartans at Argive Oenoe in fact refers to Oenoe in Attica, and depicted the arrival of the Plataean contingent prior to the battle of Marathon. The dependence of Herodotus on the paintings in the Stoa Poikile for his account of Marathon is discussed.

Two ‘twin’ type B black-glaze skyphoi with an unusual profile to the base are described. Other examples of Type B skyphoi are listed, and the problem of origins discussed.

References to rural buildings mentioned in inscriptions are analysed, particularly the records of the temple estates of Delian Apollo on Delos, Rheneia, and Mykonos. It is concluded that, against earlier interpretations, none of the vocabulary employed in the leases necessarily implies residence. Evidence from other leases confirms this. It is suggested here that buildings referred to as oikiai were not primarily residences, but centres of agricultural activity, according to season.

Excavations conducted at the cave in 1983 are described. These revealed traces of use in the Neolithic period. There is evidence of bronze age occupation, and for cult use in the Late Minoan period. The cave was not used as a burial place until the Protogeometric period.

Samples of seventeen painted Geometric vases from Veii in southern Etruria were subjected to Mössbauer analysis, a technique that has recently achieved the notoriously elusive distinction between LG made at and imported to Pithekoussai. The two main groups (A, B) and three subgroups (B-i, B-ii, B-iii) established analytically at Veii are compared with the identifications proposed on stylistic grounds for the same pieces by J.-P. Descœudres and R. Kearsley in BSA 78 (1983) 9–53. Only the five non-calcareous samples in group A appear to qualify for imported Euboean status; of the calcareous subgroups, B-i (four samples) is tentatively equated with Veii itself and B-ii (four samples) with mainland Campania; no provenance can as yet be assigned to B-iii (two samples); there are two ‘rogues’. Agreement with Descœudres and Kearsley is possible on six samples, and partially so on three more; disagreement is total in the six cases where the origin is defined stylistically as Greek and analytically as Italian (or vice versa). In view of the current shortage of comparable Mössbauer analyses, the authors stress the need for caution in interpreting the present results, and refer briefly to the circumstances in which some ‘Euboean Geometric’ from western sites might have been made by immigrant potters.

Three vase-groups, largely drawn from material found in the Purification Trench on Rheneia and published in Délos 15 and 17, are discussed in this paper. The first belongs to the Late Geometric period while the other two are to be placed in the first half of the seventh century BC. All three may be linked in sequence and together illustrate a pottery tradition which is likely to be Parian. Evidence is presented linking the Attic Würzburg Group with a Cycladic artist here identified as the Ad Painter and located on Paros.

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.

This note concerns two inscriptions discussed in the author's article in BSA 79 (1984) 289–306, which are now illustrated.

The results of trial excavations conducted in the area above the head of the Heraion Valley, Perachora, are presented. It is argued that the circular building discovered is a collecting tank for rain-water, constructed in the fifth century BC, and a strong candidate for identification as the ‘circular building’ of Xenophon Hellenika IV v, despite the fact that it is not by the lake.

In a series of soundings made in the West Court of the palace at Knossos by John D. Evans in 1969, three basement rooms of an EM IIA building were uncovered almost directly beneath the pavement of the West Court. A rich and homogeneous deposit of pottery came from these rooms, associated yard levels to the west, and fill above. Certain features, such as the pattern-burnished stemmed goblets, put the West Court House pottery at the very beginning of the EM II sequence at Knossos. A discussion of the stratification and architecture of the West Court House is followed by a representative selection of the pottery. The West Court House not only adds to our knowledge of the EM IIA settlement at Knossos, but also provides new evidence for contacts with the rest of Crete and the Aegean.