Among the most impressive monuments of the earlier part of the Bronze Age in Crete are the great circular communal tombs which began to be built, notably in the Mesara plain but also in other parts of the island, before 2000 B.C., and flourished in use throughout the first half of the 2nd millennium. Similarly, the most magnificent surviving architectural creations of the Late Bronze Age in the Aegean area are the stupendous beehive or tholos tombs of the chief Mainland centres like Mycenae. Tombs of this type, with corbelled stone vaults sunk in the ground and approached by long entrance passages (dromoi), seem to appear for the first time in the Aegean about 1600 B.C., and reach their finest and grandest expression on the Mainland of Greece in the two centuries between 1500 and 1300 B.C. A map of the Aegean area showing the distribution of these two types of tombs accompanies this article (FIG. I).

Classical archaeology has a bad name with many prehistorians, partly because of its preoccupation with aesthetics, partly because it regards matenal remains as subsidiary to literature. But even if the exponents of Greek archaeology appear amateurish, their subject has a theoretical value for prehistoric studies. Excavation has been extensive and written records often provide checks on conclusions that might be suggested by the material evidence. I give some examples.

The occurrence of designs cut on the stone walling slabs of certain prehistoric tombs in Central Germany has led from time to time to a search for comparisons, even prototypes, in the mural art of megalithic tombs in Atlantic Europe. Within recent years, some new observations and discoveries of considerable interest have been made principally as a result of a re-excavation at the well-known Lohne (Züschen) megalithic tomb near Fritzlar, and through the excavation of a tumulus on the Dölauer Heide near HallelSaale (FIG. I).

The first of these monuments is a large, megalithically constructed, collective tomb with a long rectangular chamber entered through a port-hole slab which is set between the main chamber and a short ante-chamber. The whole monument is set in a trench so that the roof was approximately at ground level. This is one of a group of such tombs in Hesse; there is a neighbouring group in Westphalia, and these are related both to a group in Sweden, and, more particularly, to the classic tombs of this type in the Paris Basin (SOM). The Dölau tumulus is something quite different, for in it, amongst other things, has been found a stone-constructed grave for only one individual. The wall and cap-stones are of moderate size but not megalithic, and the grave can be likened in various respects to some three other stone-built graves, all in the Halle district, and of which the best known was that found at Göhlitzsch with its representations of bow, quiver, and battle-axe, cut, with other decoration, on the wall faces.