The British excavations at Mycenae in 1952 were conducted with a research grant from the American Philosophical Society assisted by contributions from the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford, the British Academy, the Leverhulme Trustees, and the British School at Athens under whose aegis the work was carried out.

The excavations began on June 30th, and all active digging ceased on August 18th, though several days were needed to clear up everything and transport the finds to the National Museum in Athens and the Nauplia Museum. Of the finds the bronzes, the ivories, the inscribed tablets, and some pottery wanted for special study were taken to Athens and everything else taken to Nauplia and placed in a separate room. Of the pottery the archaic and classical pottery and the terracotta figurines from the sanctuary by the Causeway, from the excavations of 1950 and 1952, and most of the classical and Hellenistic fragments from the Perseia Fountain House are now in Athens. All the prehistoric pottery except for a few select pieces is in the Nauplia Museum.

In 1892 Tsountas in the course of exploration on the top of the ridge between the ‘Tomb of Clytemnestra’ and the Lion Gate found a painted circular cap of poros (o·61 m. in diameter), which from the cuttings in it clearly seems to have been connected with some form of installation for water (Plate 14, b). It bears an inscription which as restored refers to Perseus. This inscribed cap Tsountas says he found among later ruins, but he did not specify the exact position. In 1922 therefore we investigated the ruins of apparently Hellenistic date which lie directly to the south of the modern carriage road on the top of the ridge to the north of the ‘Tomb of Clytemnestra’. A long terrace wall of ashlar work in poros was found running in an east-west direction along the south side of the modern road. In front of it, against its north side, lie two cement-lined basins (Plate 14, a). When these were first found and partially examined in 1922 it was suggested that they might be part of a gymnasium of Hellenistic date. At the same time a trial trench XIa by side of the steps was dug down about 0·25 m. into the soft rock below. In 1939 further trials were made behind (to the south of) the western part of the main terrace wall. Trench VII, which was dug to rock, was part of this work. At the same time the curved wall was exposed and part of the ‘votive deposit’ was excavated. The pottery then found, which was lost in the Nauplia Museum during the war, was of the same character as that found in 1952 and described below. In 1952, as part of the programme of exploration on the top and sides of the ridge which runs westward from the Lion Gate, it was decided to clear these ruins completely and study and plan them afresh.

On Professor Wace's invitation I joined his staff on the Mycenae excavation in 1950 in order to undertake the testing of an area where Geometric pottery had been picked up in ploughland by the Mycenaean Causeway a kilometre S.S.W. of the acropolis. The soundings here reported were carried out in the first ten days of August at the place called Ayios Ioannis on the left bank of the Chaos watercourse, in a field which extends some sixty metres up from the causeway. On his plan of Mycenae Steffen marked considerable traces of ‘Cyclopean’ buildings a short distance back from the stream bank, but these are no longer to be seen.

The first probe was made at a distance of about seven metres to the east of the abutment of the Mycenaean Causeway on the south bank. A very rough terrace wall or substructure on an alignment north-east by north was found at plough level and exposed for a length of four metres; it has a loose stone backing something over a metre thick and is preserved to a height of 80 cm. on the face. The wall is bedded in gravel, and being at the presumed level of the top of the causeway may have had some connection with the network of roads that radiated from it; below plough level a little plain L.H. III pottery was found.

The tholos tomb, known as the Epano Phournos (see Plan, Fig. 42 and photographs Plate 24), is one of the five tholos tombs which were known at Mycenae when modern archaeological research began there with Schliemann's excavations in 1876. The other four are: the Treasury of Atreus, the Lion Tomb, the Kato Phournos, and the Tomb of Clytemnestra. All these are marked on Schliemann's plan and that of Steffen, and the first three with the Epano Phournos were seen by Leake and Gell. Thus the Epano Phournos, especially since it stands high on the top of the ridge, has probably been known for many centuries, and has often no doubt been subject to the activities of treasure seekers. It was first excavated by Tsountas in 1892, who says he cleared it. It is not absolutely certain that the Epano Phournos is the tomb referred to by Tsountas, but it is most probable. He seems to have cleared the dromos and the front of the doorway and to have dug into the centre of the ruined tholos. He makes no mention of any finds from the tomb, and no objects from it seem to be recorded in the National Museum at Athens. In 1922 in our re-examination and planning of the tholos tombs we cleared the dromos again and excavated the doorway as far as could be done with safety.

Terracotta figurine (Figs. 47 and 48). Ht. 0·09 m. L. preserved 0·08 m. Broken in four pieces and much damaged. Fine orange clay, the surface smoothed or burnished. Decoration in red lustrous paint, much worn.

The figurine seems to represent an armed man riding astride upon an animal. The animal and its rider were moulded separately and were put together while the clay was still soft before firing. The rider's legs are not represent ed. He is wearing a conical helmet, and in his right hand he is clasping what appears to be the hilt of a sword or dagger slung in front of him: but the object might be intended for a bow or quiver. The left hand of the rider and the top of his sword are missing: so is the head of the animal and three of its legs, and there are chips from the remaining leg and from the tail. The animal, from its size in relation to the man and on grounds of general probabilities, may be assumed to be a horse.

The horse has a stripe down its back and vertical zebra-like stripes along the sides which continue down the legs and round the neck. The rider's helmet is painted solid, and his eyes are represented by dots. There is a single broad stripe down his back; but any decoration which there may have been in front, on his chest and on the sword, has left no trace.

This article is the result of several months' study of the neolithic pottery of the Stratigraphical Museum at Knossos, which I undertook in the hope of adding more detail to the descriptions published by Sir Arthur Evans and Dr. D. Mackenzie. Evidence obtained from such a study is not, of course, so valuable as it would have been if these excavators themselves had had the opportunity to deal with their neolithic collections with the greater attention that they devoted, for obvious reasons, to the Minoan material. But it is hoped that the present account may make the results of their discoveries available for use in connection with future excavation of the site.

The presence of neolithic pottery at Knossos was realised in the first years of excavation, and received a certain amount of attention in summary and provisional reports, concerned as these were necessarily with the startling importance of what later came to be known as the Minoan levels. Evans understood at once the nature of the mound on which his ‘Mycenaean Palace’ stood, and made soundings to virgin soil at several different points. In dealing with the pottery he was assisted by Mackenzie, who made a careful analysis of the material from two Test Pits, and was able to recognise three stages within the neolithic period, an arrangement which was followed in the definitive publication. The somewhat later discovery of neolithic houses beneath the Central Court reinforced the conclusions already reached. Subsequent discussions of the material have been based on the work of Evans and Mackenzie rather than on independent observation, with the exception of some notes in an article by Professor V. G. Childe.

During my travels in Epirus information reached me of a site near the village of Koumsádhes, now Ammótopos, which I visited on 5 July 1931. The village lies on that route from Arta to Ioánnina which was in vogue during Turkish times and probably during antiquity; for it is both shorter and cooler in summer than the modern road which follows the Loúros valley. Leaving Arta I walked in some three and a half hours to Koumsádhes, and thence one hour westwards to the site, which occupies a limestone spur on the western side of the valley and commands the entry into the pass leading northwards over the shoulder of Mt. Xerovoúni.

The village of Molyvdoskepastos stands on the north-eastern slopes of Mount Nemerçka (Merope) on the present Greek–Albanian frontier, above the valley where the Voiussa river is joined by the tributary of Sarandaporos, in the district of Pogoniani. The 19th-century travellers in Epirus and Albania seem to have passed it by as unworthy of their attentions, although the Rev. Thomas Smart Hughes (writing in 1820) remarks not only on the number of its churches ‘which appear to have been ruined and deserted for some centuries’, but also on the unparalleled incivility of its inhabitants. The character and hospitality of the villagers, despite their recent privations, appears to have improved in proportion to the steady deterioration of their homes and their ancient monuments.

The village was formerly called Dipalitsa, but its present name is derived from the monastery of the Dormition of the Virgin, situated in the valley below close by a small tributary of the Voiussa river, and it was through the influence of this monastery that the village attained its importance as the seat of the archbishopric of Pogoniani. The foundation of the monastery and the establishment of the archbishopric are associated with the name of the Emperor Constantine IV Pogonatos (A.D. 668–85), and the tradition is borne out by documentary evidence which may or may not have been invented to supplement the deficiencies of the historians. The name Pogoniani, if a Slav derivation be discounted, is easily linked with the title Pogonatos: and it is supposed that the Emperor stayed in the district when returning by an overland route to Constantinople after his defeat of the usurper Mizizios in Sicily in 668.

About four miles south of the modern railway station of Diakophto in Achaia, on a high saddle between the valleys of the rivers known to Colonel Leake as the Bokhusia and River of Kalavryta, just north of the modern village of Mamousia, are the remains of a small walled ancient city. Leake supposed these ruins to be those of the ancient Achaean city of Keryneia: later the French Scientific Commission in the Morea identified them with the town of Bura: Leake accepted this view, which prevailed generally until it was refuted by Professor Ernst Meyer of Zürich in 1938. I was not at first inclined to accept all Professor Meyer's arguments; he has, however, courteously answered my objections, and a re-examination of the evidence has convinced me that he is right and that the ruins are indeed those of Keryneia.

I visited the ruins at the end of 1950 and in the foundations of a small building above the theatre discovered an antique bronze in the form of the head and neck of a goose. This I took to the National Museum in Athens, where it was cleaned and found to be of such interest that a small joint excavation by Mr. Zapheiropoulos, Ephor of Antiquities, and myself, was agreed upon.

This excavation was carried out in May 1951. Unfortunately Mr. Zapheiropoulos was unable to be present himself, but I had the benefit of the guidance of his experienced foreman, Mr. Andreas Mitropoulos.

Johansen in Vases Sicyoniens and Payne in Necrocorinthia and Protokorinthische Vasenmalerei isolated a number of artistic personalities, but this was, or seemed at that stage, incidental to their main object, the ordering of Protocorinthian and ‘Corinthian’ pottery by phases of chronological development. Payne left further work on painters in manuscript notes, and we and others have done something in the same line, but so far there has been no attempt to see the whole development of the style in terms of artistic personalities influencing one another (which after all it was), as has been done by Beazley for Attic red-figure and blackfigure, and by J. M. Cook for Protoattic. If such a view can be achieved it modifies the necessarily rather schematic (even Procrustean) division into chronological phases, and gives a more organic view of the development. For the ‘Corinthian’ period it is a somewhat dispiriting task, though even there we believe that it would be worth doing, if only to help our understanding of the interrelation of Corinthian and Attic. In this article, however, we are concerned only with Protocorinthian, whose general level is very high, and the principal artists of superlative quality; the isolation of painters here needs no apology.

Earlier work on these lines was impeded by the fact that the miniature side of Protocorinthian has been so much better preserved and published than the parallel and contemporary ‘big style’. The balance has recently been partly righted by Kraiker's publication of material from Aigina; and the other most important body of Protocorinthian pottery—the votive deposit from the Temple of Hera Limenia at Perachora—has already been prepared for publication by Dunbabin. We have made full use of the Perachora material in this article, and the substantiation of some of our conclusions will have to await the appearance of Perachora II. There is a third, unpublished, collection of Protocorinthian ‘big style’ vases in Berlin, from Aigina.

Two recent publications mark an important stage in the progress of Byzantine musical studies—the facsimile of the Hirmologium at Grottaferrata (Codex G) and the transcription of two Modes from the Athos manuscript (Codex H) of which the facsimile appeared in 1938. These two manuscripts, though their dates are more than a hundred years apart, embody the standard musical tradition of the Hirmologium, whose origin lies in a far remoter antiquity. Otherwise they differ greatly; for, while H is often obscure and inaccurate, we are delighted by the clarity and beauty of G, a manuscript long familiar to scholars and already used (or rather, alas, misused) by Dr. Hugo Riemann before 1909. It is therefore the good fortune of our time that we may now use G to correct or elucidate the text of H.

When we consider the signatures of the Byzantine Modes, it becomes clear that there are two main points for discussion—firstly, the actual meaning of the signature as an indication of the initial note or initial formula of the hymn; and, secondly, the origin and growth of the signature itself and the significance of its component parts.

As it happens, the former of these points has attracted earlier attention; and a practical explanation was reached before 1931. This resulted in a table of signatures, which has been amplified and thoroughly tested, so that it is now supported by the decipherment of at least two thousand hymns, carried out partly by Prof. Egon Wellesz and his collaborators, and partly by myself. Such an inductive procedure was made necessary by the conventional nature of the signatures, few of which bore a self-evident clue to their meaning. But, now that the table of signatures is firmly established, we can read all the eight Modes with equal assurance and can usually evaluate an abnormal signature by the same method.

Through the kindness of Dr. Charles Seltman I am enabled to publish an inscribed sherd in his possession, the singular character of which has not hitherto been noticed. Its history is obscure; it was bought, so Dr. Seltman informs me, from a dealer who said that it had been found on the North Slope of the Athenian Acropolis. This provenance may well be correct; the sherd is certainly Attic, and the dealer made no financial gain from his statement; nor, apparently, did he regard the inscriptions as more than a curiosity. The sherd measures 11·6 cm. at its greatest length, and is 4·8 cm. wide at 1. 22 of the inscription on the upper surface. It apparently forms part of the rim and body of a plate of the type known as a fish-plate, of which a considerable number exist, both Attic and South Italian, in a complete or fragmentary state, though they have not received much attention from scholars.

The recent publication, by Miss M. Crosby (in Hesperia XIX 189–312), of all the extant lists found at Athens belonging to the accounts of the poletai, and relating to the leasing of mines in the Laurion region, justifies a fresh examination of the administration and importance of the mines. A full topographical study, for which there is a considerable amount of material, can hardly be pursued except on the ground; the same is true of an archaeological survey of the actual mines and surface establishments. There are, on the other hand, certain problems of terminology, administration, and economic significance which are independent of such a survey, and may, indeed, help as a preliminary to it, and serve, as well, to supplement Ardaillon's work where it seems to be most out-of-date. Such problems are considered in the following study, the chief material being the lease lists so admirably published by Miss Crosby, joined to such information as may be gained from other sources.

After the close of Mr. Heurtley's excavations, an attack on the site by illicit diggers showed that the deposit had not been exhausted and that there were still fine vases (e.g. 1023, Plate 22) to be found there. Moreover, some of the conclusions drawn from the facts observed at Aetos merited further investigation.

Date of Building 9: Bench mark for both excavations was the threshold of St. George's Church. Heurtley kindly allowed me to use some of his plans, so we uncovered part of Building 9, and were thus able to fit the plans of the two excavations together. I have included Building 9 on my plan (Fig. I ), also the ‘Cairns’ 1, 2, 4, and Wall 6. An undisturbed part of the foundation trench of Building 9 contained sherds of sixth-century Corinthian kotylai, so it cannot be the Protocorinthian temple as Heurtley suggested: no offerings were connected with it.