This report is concerned with the excavation of an Early Minoan tholos tomb just south of Ayia Kyriaki in the Ayiofarango, one of the river systems which gives out on to the Libyan Sea, just west of Kaloi Limenes (fig. i). Details of the site location (plate ia) can be found in the report on the Ayiofarango survey, which, together with this report and one other already published, make up the complete report of work undertaken by the authors in the vicinity of Kaloi Limenes in the summers of 1971 and 1972. The excavation of the tholos, which was undertaken because there were surface indications that looting was incomplete but possibly to be resumed, took place in September 1972 in collaboration with Dr. C. Davaras of the Greek Archaeological Service. The excavation lasted for a period of three weeks, and was undertaken by a staff of three supervisors and ten workmen, directed by the authors.

During 1978 the British School at Athens was requested by the Herakleion Ephorate to oversee the first stage in the construction of an extension to the Venezeleion Hospital. The extension was to be built on the east side of the existing building, and to be used as a pediatric clinic. The architect wished to begin with the mechanical excavation of a rectangular cutting 23 m north-south, 10 m east-west immediately east of the extant building line. It was known that a substantial volume of upcast from the 1951–2 building of the main Venezeleion had been spread in this area, deeply burying the old ground surface. The School was asked to follow the mechanical excavation of the plot and, if necessary, stop the machine and excavate any ancient feature that might be brought to light on or below pre–1951 ground surface.

This article is a sequel to that published in BSA 76. Our aim is to compare the structure of the Late Minoan tholos tomb with that of the five Mycenaean tombs already considered. It was possible to examine three tombs in Crete which are well preserved, namely, the tombs at Achladia and Stylos complete to the top of the vault, and the tomb at Apodoulou which has been partly restored. In the event Apodoulou proved unsuitable for analysis because of the amount of restoration. In date these Cretan vaulted tombs start later than the Mycenaean series and are generally placed in LM IIIA–B. That is to say, these tombs are later than the tholoi at Dimini and Marathon and approximately contemporary with the Tomb of the Genii and the Treasury of Atreus at Mycenae. It seems most probable that the technique of constructing tholos tombs was introduced to Crete from the mainland; it was argued in the earlier paper that the circular Mesara type tombs were not vaulted in the manner of the Mycenaean tholos tombs.

In 1951 the late N. M. Kontoleon carried out a small excavation beside the church of Agioi Anargyroi, some 200 yards west of the main square of modern Chios town. In the wall of an undated tomb linked physically but not chronologically with an also undated basilica he discovered an inscription which, with his usual generosity, he allowed W. G. F. to copy, squeeze, and photograph in 1952. Unfortunately Kontoleon did not find time to give more than a partial publication and brief discussion of the text before his death, but Th. Sarikakis has now published the whole with a commentary and this has been followed by the extensive and (as always) illuminating comments of J. and L. Robert and the fuller treatment of L. Moretti (see bibliography below). In view, however, of the importance of the document, we feel it may be useful to present a somewhat corrected version (the result of frequent contemplation by W.G.F. between 1952 and 1967 and a thorough re-examination by P.S.D. in 1979), along with some detailed commentary and arguments about its date and immediate context. We should like to thank A. P. Stephanou, the former director of the Archaeological Museum in Chios, for his constant patience and kindness, and his successor, Miss A. Zacharou, for more recent help. Both, we are sure, would approve our dedication of this note to the memory of Kontoleon.

Heinrich Schliemann (1822–90) was, it is well known, an energetic correspondent, a compulsive note-taker and an inveterate hoarder. For the archaeologist, as for the biographer, he left behind a rich mine with many seams. There is, however, no clear account of the history, location, and extent of Schliemann's literary remains. This paper is intended to go some way towards filling that gap. It has the additional aim of drawing attention to some notable lacunae in the Schliemann archive at the Gennadius Library in Athens in case the missing material should ever come to light.

The reforms of Solon have been a source of debate for many years now. The number of articles, chapters, and books written about them is legion. The justification for the present attempt is that it approaches the problem from a slightly different angle. The overriding aims of this paper are: (a) to elucidate what the agricultural system was in this period and to demonstrate that it did not ‘change with glacial slowness’ and that farmers were not incapable of increasing production; (b) to propose the adoption of a slightly different theoretical framework for analysing the culture of Greece in the eighth and seventh centuries B.C. Here, as in so many studies of archaic economies, the main schools of thought are the formalists and the substantivists; the formalists can be further broken down into the capitalists and the Marxists (see below p. 119). Proponents of both sides use predominantly, though not exclusively, analogies derived from Medieval Europe; this, as I shall argue shortly, has led to some serious misunderstandings. Feudal Europe was the culmination of a long development which was very different from that which preceded archaic Greece. Although it is possible to see some resemblances, on the whole they were two distinct cultures.

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.

During the last three decades, wooden coffins have come to light in increasing numbers in graves of the earlier phases of the Late Minoan period, especially in the area of Knossos. When their form and dimensions can be discerned, they often belong to a type that is or imitates a chest for household use. Sinclair Hood, Ingo Pini, and Bogdan Rutkowski, who have dealt with these coffins, agree on their general similarity to the clay larnakes of the type called chest-larnakes that are so common in the LM III graves of central and western Crete, and for which wooden prototypes are generally assumed. Hood and Pini also stress that the wooden coffins belong to a different tradition from that of the earlier, Middle Minoan, clay larnakes, but that the origin of the type is unknown. Rutkowski thinks that the wooden coffin was ‘a subsequent development of the M.M. rectangular larnax made of clay’. Common to all three is that they see the use of the wooden coffin as a purely Minoan phenomenon, in line with the tradition of larnakes from Early Minoan onwards till the end of the Bronze Age. They note in passing that there are a few examples of sarcophagi of wood, stone, and terracotta on the Mycenaean mainland, but attribute their occurrence to Minoan influence.

The site of Ayios Stephanos, a low hill at the NW. edge of the coastal plain in southern Laconia, was excavated in 1959, 1960, 1963, 1973, 1974, and 1977, under the direction of Lord William Taylour, and the auspices of the British School at Athens. The excavations have revealed a prehistoric settlement directly overlain by medieval buildings. Pottery of this latter period is difficult to date, but fortunately study of the numismatic evidence yields a terminus post quern in the mid thirteenth century, and the coins continue to c.1320 a.d. There was no subsequent occupation of the site. Since the medieval coins are of some historical and numismatic interest, the excavator has agreed that this article should appear in advance of the main publication of the site.

It is the aim of this note to publish, as soon as possible after its discovery, a single kernos found in the Laureion. The significance of the piece is that it is another example of an uncommon type of pot recently studied and thought to be in effect confined, in Greece, to Eleusis and Athens— apart from one lone stray also found somewhere in that same Laureion district. A further interest is that both Laureion kernoi came from mining sites, but whereas the first was a surface find from a slag heap, the new kernos was found in the course of excavations, in a closed archaeological context.

‘The vases of the Acheloos Painter and those in his manner might have been included in the long Leagros list, as they are central examples of the Leagran style: I have placed them in a list of their own, but would insist that they are no less Leagran than the others.’ Thus Beazley, in the introduction to the long Leagran chapter in ABV. The Leagros Group is a large and embarrassingly homogeneous group of late sixth-century Attic black-figure vases; so stylistically homogeneous is it, in fact, that even Beazley admitted a certain defeat when it came to attributing most of them to their painters. As a group they have a well-defined personality, and much of what is true of any one vase is also true of the others, whence the particular problems of attribution. It is an important group because it is contemporary with the red-figure Pioneers, Euphronios, Euthymides, Phintias, and their coterie, and stylistically like their work; Beazley claimed in the ABV introduction that the Leagran pots were painted in the same workshop.

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.

Tomb XVIII in the Gypsades cemetery, south of the Knossos Palace, was excavated by Sinclair Hood, George Huxley, and Nancy Sandars in 1955 and published in 1959.1

The main chamber contained at least 9 burials. Only a handful of objects were found associated with these burials: a small bronze bead with the skull of Skeleton II, 4 small, plain vessels with the skull of Skeleton III, silver ear-rings with Skeleton IV, a lentoid sealstone of hammered silver or meteorite with Burial VII, and a small bronze link with Burial VIII.

Throughout ancient Europe and the Mediterranean a considerable quantity of archaeological objects have been found, which, because their specific function is not fully understood, are generally referred to as ‘phalara’. Typically the name is applied to a bronze disc of variable size with a domed central portion and a flat surrounding rim.

The amount of literature devoted to this subject is large, and it is not the purpose of this article to enter into a wide-ranging review of the theories advanced to explain the function of these artefacts. It might be useful, however, briefly to summarize the opinions of Professor Snodgrass, a leading contender in the discussion, which have been most recently expressed, I believe, in an article entitled ‘Bronze “Phalara”—A Review’ published in 1973.

In November 1978 the British School was requested by the Herakleion Ephorate to investigate a suspected chamber tomb in the Knossos Roman cemetery on the south-eastern slopes of Monasteriaki Kephala. The writer, then Knossos Fellow, undertook the excavation on behalf of the School. The tomb proved to be unpillaged; its contents were of unusual interest, not least among them being a large, closely datable group of glass vessels.