The aim of this article is to publish David French's manuscript on Lefkandi Phase I, in as close a form as possible to what he wrote. Some changes have been necessary to improve the presentation of the material, to correct occasional errors, and to conform with BSA stylistic requirements. The material discussed is essentially that from the lowest levels of the ‘Deep Sounding’ in Trench CC. The discussion has four sections. The first section is a very brief comment on the stratigraphical data, including sections of the Lefkandi Phase I stratum in Trench CC and plans of the remains of sub-phases. The second section is the core of the paper, a general account of the pottery, listing wares and shapes identifiable, which demonstrates that it contains a little material from periods certain or likely to be earlier than Phase I (Final Neolithic, Early Helladic I and Early Helladic II), also later strays, but essentially belongs to a range of wares that have clear West Anatolian links, although it cannot be linked exclusively with any individual Anatolian site or region. The third section lists the small finds from the stratum, with catalogue entries on the most significant, including a seal impression on a probable pithos rim fragment. Finally, the fourth section sums up views on the classification of the pottery, its chronological relationship with the Early Helladic sequence, its cultural relationship with West Anatolian material, and the question of how an essentially Anatolian style of pottery came to be locally produced in Euboea, with a range of references to comparable material from other Aegean sites.

This paper presents a more detailed account of the pottery of Phases IV–VI in the Middle Helladic (MH) sequence at Lefkandi: Xeropolis than is available in the preliminary report. It is based essentially on an unfinished draft compiled by Roger Howell (the Howell manuscript). After an introduction on the background, there is discussion of the Howell manuscript, and then an analysis of the stratigraphy of Trench CC, the basis for the phasing of the pre-Mycenaean phases of Lefkandi; brief comments are also provided on those trial trenches that produced relevant material. The pottery of the three phases is then set out in detail, with attention to the relative popularity of wares and the shapes within those wares, and to possible imports, and they are argued to be classifiable as later ‘MH I’ (Phase IV), advanced ‘MH II’ (Phase V), and the early Mycenaean period, quite possibly starting in ‘MH III’ but continuing well into Late Helladic II (Phase VI). A summary sets out some distinctive characteristics of the Lefkandi sequence, as deducible from this material, and some general conclusions.

After a generation of intensive regional surface survey in the Mediterranean lands, it is both necessary and enlightening to evaluate the ways in which this new approach has produced results which either support, or demand modifications to, or directly challenge, previous ideas on the evolution of human settlement systems in this macro-region. Given that many regional survey projects have only recently achieved final publication, or are in the final stages of so doing, the implications of these recent discoveries are only now becoming apparent or discussed. The present paper is one attempt to draw wider conclusions from a region of Central Greece – the province of Boeotia, where the author has been conducting intensive survey since 1979. Specifically it compares the state of knowledge regarding the settlement evolution of the region based upon an earlier topographic and extensive survey tradition (Tossey 1988), with the results now available from the author and colleagues' intensive survey in two districts of the province.

A radical reinterpretation of the later prehistoric settlement systems is proposed with significant modifications also to the reconstruction of Classical and Hellenistic settlement networks. Closer agreement with prior knowledge is found with the new information for Roman and Late Roman settlement, whilst the further evolution of regional communities in medieval and post-medieval times – left out of Tossey's Gazetteer – can now be set out in some detail. The latter periods, as a result of highly informative historical sources, especially village tax registers, provide a cautionary tale in the complexities of matching archaeological settlement ‘continuities’ or ‘shifts’ with population and ethnic continuity. The overall analysis for the long-term settlement history of the province leads to the suggestion that similarities in settlement patterns have more to do with geography ‘constraining and enabling’ than with continuities of particular population or ethnic groups. This could seriously undermine the currently fashionable emphasis in Landscape Archaeology on the role of ‘memory’ and a ‘sense of place’ in the interpretation of past settlement networks.