The work of excavation on the Palace site at Knossos was re-opened on February 27, 1901, and continued till June 17. Various supplementary operations connected with the shoring up and underpinning of the walls of large halls brought to light on the south-east of the site, the completion of the roofing-in of the Throne Room, and similar works of conservation entailed the continued employment of a large number of workmen till the beginning of July. Throughout the excavations I again secured the valuable services of Dr. Duncan Mackenzie as my assistant in directing the works, and of Mr. D. T. Fyfe, formerly architect of the British School, in preparing architectural plans and drawings.

Excavations were undertaken by me on behalf of the Cretan Exploration Fund in the spring of 1901, in pursuance of a programme for exploring the Eteocretan country. Primitive remains had been noted in the Zakro district, by Captain Spratt in 1852, and been more fully described by Prof. F. Halbherr in the Antiquary for 1892 (p. 153). They were visited later by others, notably Prof. L. Mariani in 1893. Mr. A. J. Evans in 1894 and 1896 visited the upper valley, and besides giving a short account of what he saw in the Academy (July 4, 1896), preserved very full notes made on the spot. When a coastal site in East Crete was desired, he recommended these remains, near a natural port, the last on the directest sea-route from the Aegean to the Cyrenaic shore, to my attention.

The human remains discovered by Mr. Hogarth in the caves of the Zakro Gorge, and sent to me for identification, consist of three skulls of adults and a fragment of an upper maxillary of a child. The skulls present the following characters. All are well developed, with highly complicated sutures, and wormean bones in the parieto-occipital suture, with thin cranial walls, and without the strong muscular impressions and ridges, usually met with in prehistoric skulls, and present in all living uncivilised peoples.

Among the objects in the Finlay Collection, which recently passed into the possession of the British School at Athens, is the inscription published by Ulrich Koehler first (C.I.A. ii. 410) from the defective copy of Pittakis (L'ancienne Athènes, p. 494) and afterwards from a copy made by himself, C.I.A. iv, 2 p. 109, 410. It is written ατοιχηδόν in large letters on the lower part of a slab measuring 0·475 m. in height, 0·525 m. in width, 0·12 m. in thickness and runs as follows: