This article should have been published in BSA xxxviii with the rest of the Karphi material. That it was not was due to the fact that in 1939 the pottery was insufficiently mended for drawing and photography. Most of the text was written by the beginning of 1940 and approved by John Pendlebury before his death. I can only apologize for subsequent delays and admit that I have forgotten much which might have been relevant.

Methods: The pottery from each room and each strosis was carefully collected and labelled. During the first two seasons it was then brought to Tzermiadho for study, but in 1939 arrangements were made for dealing with it on the site, which greatly simplified the work.

At first sherds were washed by women from the village, but the difficulties of washing were so great that it was soon decided that all those that were painted, or probably painted, would have to be washed by one of ourselves if their patterns were to be preserved. Even so there were many instances where no treatment which we could devise would remove the mud without also removing the colour, if not the entire surface. Eventually only such coarse sherds as seemed to be worth making up, or to represent new types, were washed at all, since brushing in plain water, which was all that these would stand, had so little effect that sorting was just as easy without it.

The base silver deniers of the type from Tours which in the thirteenth century were the common currency of large parts of France served as the model for the later coinage of Frankish Greece. From the mid-thirteenth century onwards, for more than a hundred years, deniers tournois were the standard coin of Attica, Bœotia, the Peloponnese, and some of the Aegean islands. They were struck in very large numbers by the princes of Achaia and the dukes of Athens, and in smaller quantities by the rulers of several other territories. Three examples are illustrated in Fig. 1 d–ƒ, from which it can be seen that the design of all the coins was virtually identical, except for the names of the issuing authorities and of the places of mintage. On one side was a cross, and on the other the so-called ‘castle of Tours’, really a degenerated version of the design of a ninth-century coin showing a Christian temple (see Fig. 1a). There is a long series of Achaian coins bearing the names of Prince William of Villehardouin, Charles I king of Naples, Charles II, Prince Florent, Isabel, Philip of Savoy, Philip of Taranto, Louis, Maud, John, and Robert. Their dates of issue can therefore be readily determined. Most of the Athenian coins are from the reigns of William and Guy II de la Roche.

Of the innumerable minor shrines which were scattered over all parts of the city of Athens and its suburbs, one of the most curious is the shrine of Kodros, Neleus, and Basile. Nothing of it has been found, and its site in south-eastern Athens is only approximately known, but we have a good deal of interesting and at some points puzzling information about it, mainly from an inscription, IG i2. 94, a decree of the Boule and the Demos of 418/17 B.C. Much has been written about this decree, which amongst other things has points of chronological interest and is important in connexion with the leasing of shrines, but its topographical and architectural implications have not been fully worked out, or else have been misinterpreted. E. Curtius, who first attacked the problem after Koumanoudes's provisional publication, went so far as to draw a plan of the shrine with the catchment area from which it drew the water for its olives, in relation to the neighbouring part of south-eastern Athens; but in nearly all particulars his plan is open to serious doubt. Others, including Judeich, who merely prints ‘Neleus und Basile?’ in the region of the presumed site (his Plan I, G 7), have been more vague and cautious. IG i2. 94 will repay a little further topographical study, I believe, and several more recently found inscriptions may throw a little new but uncertain light on Basile.

This survey (Part II of which will be published shortly in the Annual) includes all Laconia, as far as the ancient borders with Messenia and Arcadia, the Thyreatis, and the islands of Kythera and Antikythera. Most of the results have been established by surface research alone, in 1936–8 and 1956–8. Little was previously known about the distribution of prehistoric sites in Laconia, and few settlements have been excavated.

Much of Laconia is either mountain or hill country. The ranges of Taygetus and Parnon form the bones of the province, while between them the Eurotas flows through the fertile alluvial plains of Sparta and Helos down to the Laconian Gulf. The Spartan plain, the central Eurotas valley, is bounded to the north by broken hill country, to the west by the great mountain wall of Taygetus (Plates 15a and the map, Plate 24), spurs of which also enclose it on the south, and to the east by the great Parnon range. It is one of the most fertile plains in Greece, and must at all times have been able to support a considerable settled population.

This brief study of objects of Minoan origin found in Cyprus seeks to draw attention to a branch of Cypriot studies which for many years has remained neglected. Since the time of Forsdyke's often criticized pioneer study, no attempt has been made to collect the material under a single heading, or to comment upon its significance. Instead, in not a few cases the Minoan origin of these objects has been overlooked, and they are classified as Mycenaean or Levanto-Helladic.

Fashions in archaeology are well known to be arbitrary. General interest in Minoan studies has been on the wane in recent years, to the considerable advantage of the prehistory of Mainland Greece. This merely reversed a state of affairs which obtained in the years that saw the publication of The Palace of Minos. Now, however, there seems good reason to hope that a more balanced outlook on both Crete and Greece is coming into being. The moment is opportune, so the writers believe, for a contribution towards a fuller understanding of Minoan overseas relations.

After this brief introduction, there follows a catalogue of the objects found in Cyprus which are considered by the writers to be of Minoan fabric and origin. The catalogue is divided very broadly into (1) Middle Minoan and (2) Late Minoan objects. Amongst the former will be found one vase and several bronzes, while the latter lists only vases and fragments. The writers are very grateful to the Rev. V. E. G. Kenna for contributing a note on the seal impressions on 35.

The graves published here lie in a group by the junction of the main Knossos–Heraklion road and the secondary road to Ambelakia (Fig. 1). In May 1939 workmen widening the road to Ambelakia uncovered a tomb (Tomb I) which was cleared by the British School's Curator at Knossos, Mr. R. W. Hutchinson. In the summer of the same year the late Mr. T. J. Dunbabin, then Assistant Director of the British School, excavated five other tombs (Tombs II–VI) in the roadside. During the war a rectangular pit was dug near the road-corner by the occupying forces in Crete, presumably for a shelter which was never constructed. The pit revealed at least two other tombs whose contents were taken to Heraklion. The vases were subsequently removed from the island but for two which the ephor, Dr. N. Platon, rescued for the museum, and which he has kindly permitted me to publish here (Vases A and B). In September 1953 I excavated the dromoi of the two tombs which had been in the pit and cleared a side chamber in one of them (Tomb VIII), as well as a small tomb which had been partially disturbed by the pit (Tomb VII).

The two white lekythoi illustrated in Plate 40 a–b and Figs. 1–2 were found together in a basement of the National Museum in Athens. The provenience is unknown. They are restored, and have necks, mouths, and handles belonging to other lekythoi. The height of the ancient parts is 0·33 m. The outlines of the drawing are a mixture of matt red and brown; the added colours are mauve, green, and light brown. No vent-hole is visible in either of them.

The subject of the composition on no. 19272 (Plate 40 a and Fig. 1) is a visit to the grave. There is a grave stele in the middle, projecting on to the shoulder of the vase; it rests on a step and has three shafts, one rising from the other. The lowest shaft is the broadest, the middle one the highest. The two lower shafts are crowned by a plinth. From each plinth two tiers of acanthus leaves rise, in outline, or painted mauve, green, or light brown. These enrich the stele, diminish the excessive elevation, and add balance. From the lowest leaves of the upper acanthus group two woollen sashes hang, the left-hand one green, the other mauve. A third sash, green, hangs from the upper border band to left of the stele. Behind the stele, a trapeza, resting on a couple of steps, gives more stability to the general aspect of the monument.

The neighbourhood of the Vlychia stream, a little distance to the south-west of the Palace of Minos, has already been noted as an area of settlement in Geometric times. This is now further confirmed by the discovery of a well at about 50 metres north of the stream slightly to the west of the main road to Heraklion; with the exception of a small quantity of stray Middle and Late Minoan sherds in the first 2 metres, the finds ranged from Protogeometric to Early Orientalizing.

The diameter of the well was 0·90 m. At a depth of 1·4 m. began a deposit of Geometric pottery which continued in large quantities down to the sixth metre, mixed with animal bones, pebbles, large stones, brown clayey earth, and a little charcoal. Farther down pottery became rarer and consisted mostly of large coarse wares, while the earth became looser. Between 9 and 10 metres fine pottery virtually ceased, except for small pieces of black cups as 60 and 61 below: much of the space was taken up by the sherds of one enormous coarse basin. Since no fragments of its bottom were found, we may conjecture that it was used as a well-head which either collapsed or was destroyed owing to the drying up of the well. Hence all pottery above the ninth metre is a rubbish fill, which will henceforth be referred to as the Upper Deposit.

The economic and political development of the Greek states from the eighth century onwards left few, if any, of their tribal organizations unaffected; as these became unworkable or unpopular, the traditional divisions into tribes, phratries, and gene, based in practice, if not in origin, on kinship, were sooner or later replaced or modified. But the factors which led to reform were many; it might be the problem of a subject population, a mixed population, a shifting population, or of synoecism; it might be the need for military reform; or simply a question of political feeling, an attempt to satisfy anti-aristocratic prejudice by destroying the essentially aristocratic kinship system. More than one factor could be involved in any change; each might have a different effect on the result. Consequently the process was not simple or uniform; the new order might be wholly artificial or merely a modification of the old; the old might be discarded or retained alongside the new for some special purpose; old names, proper or generic, might still be used in the new system at the same or even at a different level. In such confusion it is essential to analyse in detail the evidence for each organization on its own before looking for any general pattern or arguing by analogy from one state's system to another.

In the case of Chios the relevant documents have often been interpreted in the light of what was known of the gentilicial system of Attica. Tribes, of number unknown, were thought to have been divided into phratries, each composed of several smaller units of two kinds, gene and thiasoi. The comparison is misleading. The constitution of the Attic phratries is far from clear, but, whatever it may have been, these documents from Chios, of which the text is given below, must belong to a very different order.

The fragment which I publish here by the kind permission of Dr. J. Papademetriou lies in the courtyard of the Piraeus Museum. Of its origins nothing can be said. It does not appear in the Museum inventory, and all that can be affirmed for certain is that it was already in the Museum in January 1937, when Mr. J. G. Griffith made a squeeze which is now in the Ashmolean Museum. This squeeze besides its chronological value is also helpful, in that it shows rather more than can now be read on the stone.

Fragment of Pentelic marble with left-hand edge and original rough-picked back preserved. Height: 0·352 m.; width: 0·349 m.; thickness: 0·152 m. Uninscribed left margin of 0·026 m. Uninscribed space below last line of at least 0·110 m. Cut with two chisels of 10 mm. and 6 mm., the smaller being employed for the cross-bars of epsilon, alpha, and the aspirate, the horizontal and right vertical of pi, and all three strokes of upsilon and sigma. Horizontal chequer: 0·0137 m.; vertical chequer: 0·0194 m. (Plate 51a).

One of the most arresting natural features at Delphi is the great rock pulpit which projects between the ruins of the Bouleuterion and the terrace walls supporting Apollo's temple (Plate 51b). It is rent on its southern side by a large fissure up which was hewn a flight of still discernible steps. The area in which it stands is of more than ordinary interest, as being identifiable with τὸ τᾶς Γᾶς ἱερρόν mentioned in a Delphic inscription dating from the fourth century B.C. On the rock itself the Sibyl, variously identified, was said to have sat (or stood) and prophesied. Yet most modern Delphic historians, while devoting much space to the Pythia, and to the obscure details of the oracle's mechanism, either have tended to ignore the Sibyl altogether, or have dismissed her from serious consideration with a few brief words as an unimportant late-comer. Some indeed have come near to identifying her with the Pythia. One actually did.

Cretulae is the name given in this article to the small clay nodules, stamped with one or more seal impressions, that have been found in quantity at most Bronze Age sites in the Near East. The Minoan examples are generally smaller than those found at other sites, and the great majority of them have a hole through which string once passed. That is to say, they are lumps of clay squeezed round string and then sealed. At most of the sites in Crete where they are known, they have been found in conjunction with inscribed clay tablets and clay disks. At Hagia Triada they are unique in being for the most part countermarked with a sign of the Linear A script. The interrelationships of the countermarks and sealings have not previously been recorded, and it is the primary purpose of this article to publish them. The catalogue will be found in Appendix A. Proper analysis of it should shed light on Minoan methods of administration, and perhaps too on the purpose of the Linear A tablets. That the tablets, or some of them, belong to a coherent system of administration, and are not all mere inventory lists of what happened to be coming into or going out of store at a particular moment, seems guaranteed by the fact, to which I shall revert later, that totals in the same numerical proportion are found at widely distant sites.

In the Museum at Chalcis there are more than a dozen black-figured vases decorated with palmettes, lotus flowers, leaves, and other plant motives. I drew attention to some of these in BSA xli. 27 f., associating with them similar vases in Athens, Berlin, Bonn, Reading, and Thebes, and suggesting that they were probably made in Euboea. It is possible now to go farther and take a more extended view of what was undoubtedly a vigorous local industry in either Chalcis or Eretria or both in the fourth century B.C.

For convenience the material is here divided into groups according to the shapes of the palmettes and lotuses and the character of the patterns. The order may not be strictly chronological and the vases grouped together do not necessarily come from the same workshop, but certain lines of development can be traced and the groups link together to form a coherent whole.

This article continues my observations on the temple of Poseidon published in BSA xlv (1950) 78 ff. I begin with what I have recently noticed of the architectural detailing and decoration of this temple. Zschietzschmann (AA 1929, 223 f.) noticed a painted pattern of a very unexpected design on the inner taenia of the architrave. It is a well-kept rule in Greek architecture that the decoration of a moulding should echo its profile. So a taenia of rectangular section, assuming that it needed decoration at all, should have had some sort of Greek fret (for which see below). At Sunium, however, it has the Oriental Coil, an ornament which, in any case, is oftener seen on Ionic buildings than on Doric. In Doric, indeed, it is known to have established itself in only one position, on a certain type of flat clay cornice-revetment, probably invented in Corinth, found in a primitive form, and not quite, perhaps, in its canonical position, on the temple of Artemis at Corcyra, and thereafter stereotyped on the monotonous, sub-Corinthian clay cornice-revetments churned out in Sicily during the century down to 480 B.C. At Sunium one can only suppose that the Oriental Coil brought the Doric architrave of the side ptera into greater harmony with the Ionic of the east pteron.