Whilst visiting Ios during his Cycladic tour of 1837, George Finlay purchased a number of Early Cycladic objects, which include four marble figurines (three of folded arm type), three marble vessels and a lead figurine now thought to be fake. This article traces the current whereabouts of these objects, describes and illustrates them, examines the detail of their original purchase and places them within the current framework of Early Cycladic chronology.

The excavation is described of a much damaged shrine building five kilometres east-north-east of Sparta, in use from the 7th to the 4th centuries B.C., and again in the 3rd and 4th centuries A.D.

Tile stamps suggest it was dedicated to Zeus Messapeus. Finds include many handmade terracotta statuettes, chiefly of grotesque ithyphallic human figures.

Eleven Sub-Mycenaean and Protogeometric vases from the museum of the British School at Athens are published. Five are treated in Desborough's Protogeometric Pottery but the remainder are presented for the first time. Although none has a reliable provenance, all but one seem to be of Attic origin and were probably found in Athens. The other one comes from the Thessalo-Euboian region, most likely from Euboia itself.

The generally accepted date (377/6) of the earliest Athenian naval inventory of the fourth century B.C., IG II2 1604, rests upon an unsafe restoration and several improbable assumptions. The fact that a Secretary 377/6 is named as trierarch on 1604 casts severe doubt on the accepted date. Indeed, the small number of allotted triremes on 1604 strongly suggests a date before the outbreak of war in 378. The record on 1604 of an Athenian trireme borrowed by the Chian Antimachos, which is easily associated with the negotiations at the very foundation of the Athenian Confederacy, seems to date 1604 to 379/8. Thus it is unlikely that the new series of inventories began only in 378/7 as a consequence of that foundation; the absence from the Navy Lists of outstanding debts datable before 378/7 indicates perhaps a successful collection of naval debts in that year. The existence of a substantial number of newly constructed triremes on 1604 discredits the view that the Peace of 387/6 banned all naval activity in Greece. New readings on Tod 117 demonstrate that Athens continued to deploy ships during the Peace. Its terms, which were not particularly harsh on Athens, more closely resembled those rejected in 392, which did allow trireme-building, than those of 371 and later. Anyhow these later Koinai Eirenai, like the Peace of Antalcidas, prohibited, not all military activity, but only warfare among the signatory states.

Three small examples of shoulder-lekythoi in museums in Western Crete are described and discussed. Though evidently derived from the Attic Series, it is suggested that they are the products of a local workshop.

Pausanias' date (371) for the foundation/synoikism of the federal Arkadian capital, Megalopolis, is preferable to Diodorus' (368). But the process was spread over several years, beginning soon after the Battle of Leuktra. Diodorus' source here was not Ephorus but the ‘chronographic source’ from which Diodorus derived other material about city-foundations, synoikisms etc. The ‘battle’, after which Diodorus says the city was founded, may in the chronographer have been Leuktra itself rather than the ‘Tearless Battle’ of 368. There are no good military or political objections to the suggested dating, which avoids the need to postulate two Arcadian federalists called Proxenos, both active and prominent at much the same time.

The chance discovery of a unique unpublished nineteenth-century photograph in the archive of the BSA has led to the re-discovery of one of the lost Byzantine churches of Constantinople. The church, known as the Seyh Murad Mescidi, was destroyed by 1880, and is preserved only through two lithographs and descriptions. These sources are re-accessed in the light of the BSA photograph, and a Comnene date for the main part of the building is proposed, with Palaeologan additions. Previous attributions concerning the church's Byzantine dedication are examined and found wanting. An alternative dedication, to the Prophet Elisha, is suggested.

The development of our present-day knowledge of the Parthenon sculptures can be charted in the history of the British Museum's casts of them. Following their acquisition in 1816, the Elgin Marbles were added to periodically in an attempt to render the collection – at least where the Parthenon sculptures were concerned – as complete as possible. These additions include some fragments of original sculpture but, mostly, they consist of casts of sculpture found on the Acropolis following Greek independence. The activities of the Greek Archaeological Society on the Acropolis, removing later accretions and restoring the monuments, created a desire in Athens for casts of the Elgin Marbles. The story of the two-way traffic in casts between Athens and London is told here and documented from the archives of the British Museum.

New data on Late Bronze Age Cypriot and Aegean material found in the eastern, southern, and central Mediterranean significantly alter timeworn concepts about the scope and extent of Mediterranean trade systems. Recent geochemical and statistical analyses highlight the pivotal role played by the production, distribution, and consumption of copper oxhide ingots in the Bronze Age economies of the wider Mediterranean world. As a consequence, it is possible to propose some basic hypotheses on metallurgical origins, and on the possible orientation of Mediterranean Bronze Age trade and traders.

Two basic issues are involved: 1) did increased trade with the eastern Mediterranean stimulate production and intensify exchange mechanisms in the central Mediterranean? 2) or did eastern Mediterranean traders simply plug into an existing politico-economic system that somehow monitored metals' production and exchange further west?

This paper also evaluates the impact of new archaeological and metallurgical data on traditional interpretations of Cypriot copper production and exchange in its Late Bronze Age Mediterranean context. Whilst Cypriot copper production remained important to the economy of the Bronze Age Mediterranean, it also made key tactical and commercial adjustments to the coming Age of Iron. Mechanisms of Mediterranean trade are still difficult to pin down, and it is unrealistic to do more than propose basic models of entrepreneurship, ethnicity, and exchange.

Three poorly preserved Hellenistic towers from NW Andros investigated during the course of a survey are discussed. The two small round towers of Tsouka and Ayia Marina, characterized by their humble masonry, are related to agricultural activities with a very restricted defensive role. The tower of Ayia Marina had probably also served as a road station. The third tower of Choreza is square, a public work in advanced military architecture which appears to be part of the defensive system of Andros. Reference is made to masonry types encountered on the island in relation to the architecture of the three towers. Recently the ruins of a fourth square tower were located at Tokeli near the N coast, obviously related with the trafficked naval channel between Andros and Euboea.

David G. Hogarth (1862–1927) was the second student to be admitted to the newly-established British School at Athens in February 1887. In 1897 he became its fourth Director. Hogarth conducted much fieldwork and excavation in the eastern Mediterranean in the period 1888 to 1911 and has left a fine series of eleven excavation daybooks covering such important sites as Phlylakopi, Naucratis, Ephesus and Carchemish. Based upon this material the paper examines Hogarth as a theoretical and practical archaeologist of his day.

After a brief account of the life and personality of R.M. Dawkins (Director of the British School at Athens, 1906–1914), based partly on unpublished material, the author summarizes Dawkins's career as an archaeologist, philologist, and folklorist. There follows a critical account of his work on the Greek dialects of Cappadocia and of other regions in central Asia Minor; Dawkins's magnum opus, Modern Greek in Asia Minor (1916) was the most thorough study ever made of this topic. Mention is made of Dawkins's contribution to the study of Pontic, which he was prevented by events from exploring thoroughly in situ. Apart from his work on individual dialects, his reputation as a dialectologist rests on his accumulation of evidence in support of his hypothesis that there is a fundamental east-west division in the Modern Greek dialects. The limitations of Dawkins's accumulative method are alluded to; he described a corpus rather than formulating rules for the generation of utterances. His contribution to the collection and classification of Greek folk tales – his second most important achievement – is also assessed. Finally mention is made of developments in Modern Greek studies since Dawkins's time.

Notes made by Dr Mark Cameron on fragments of wall painting from the prehistoric cemetery area at Mycenae are transcribed. They include his comments and interpretation.

Factors which determine the siting of Mycenaean cemeteries are discussed. These include relationship to roads; a prominent position, especially for some of the more imposing monuments; relationship to the ‘sacred landscape’. Within cemeteries clusters of graves occur. The small total number of these, it is suggested, represent political alliance groups rather than families. Further research is necessary before arriving at more definite conclusions.

A few points are illustrated concerning regional Mycenaean pottery from the Greek mainland dating from LHIIA to LHIIIC Late. It has been suggested that the use of certain motifs on certain closed shapes was perhaps as a label for the contents of the vase. Early Mycenaean regional styles in peripheral areas, such as Thessaly and Phocis, are discussed and regional preferences during the LHIIIA2–IIIB koine are mentioned. The influence of Crete on Mycenaean pottery in Laconia and Messenia during these phases is demonstrated. Contacts between the Ionian islands and the north-west Peloponnese with other areas in LHIIIC Late are noted.

In this paper – the revised text of a public lecture given in Athens on 23 February 1989 – the author reviews both the historical and anatomical evidence for identifying the occupants of the royal tombs at Vergina as: Tomb I: not known; Tomb II: Philip II and either Cleopatra or Meda; Tomb III: Alexander IV. The case for Philip III Arrhidaios and Eurydice in Tomb II is shown to be anthropologically weak. The paper also includes a catalogue of the human remains from Tomb II antechamber (Cleopatra or Meda) and Tomb III (Alexander IV). The arrival of cremation in Greece, and both Homeric and later Macedonian attitudes to the rite are also discussed. The general conclusion is that cremations are a valuable source of biological and archaeological information.

Death may be the great leveller, but some families can mark the event more spectacularly than others. In an attempt to set the royal burials at Vergina into some form of mortuary context, the cremated remains from three rich, non-royal 4th-century Macedonian tombs – Nea Mihaniona II and III and Derveni Beta – were studied with an eye on both biology and mortuary practices. This investigation showed that: (i) a neonate cremated and buried with its mother can survive both events remarkably well, with important consequences for the Vergina debate; (ii) the Derveni crater contained two individuals; (iii) the Nea Mihaniona, Derveni Beta, Vergina II antechamber, Vergina III and Phoinikas (report in preparation) cremations form a homogeneous group in terms of fragment size and weight. This sets them midway between (a) their far less substantial Dark Age forebears and (b) the unique whole cremated skeleton from the main chamber of Vergina Tomb II.

An inscribed block of marble re-used as a threshold in the monastery of Agios Sabbas on Melos is shown to be the missing left-hand architrave block from the monument of Mithradates on Delos. In general the text restored by Chapouthier is confirmed, with minor modification, but a new text for the third line of the inscription is added.

The technique of Graph Theory is described and applied to the ancient road system of the Peloponnese, using the network described in the Peutinger Table, and compared with George Gennadius' map of 1822. The result demonstrates the relative importance of centres in the Peloponnese during the Roman period, and the modification to the pattern of road usage resulting from sea communications. Details of a computer programme for the necessary calculations are given in an appendix.