The bronzes described below were found about 0·20 m. below the surface in the central part of the Prehistoric Cemetery area excavated at Mycenae in 1952. (Cf. BSA XLVIII 6f., with pl. 2—hereinafter referred to without the volume reference.) They lay together in a small heap as though they had been buried in a bag of some material which had entirely perished. The numbers attached to the objects here are those of the 1952 excavation inventory.

The combination of cruciform hilt, flanged throughout, with a blade narrow but without midrib, is not very common, though there is a good L.M. III parallel from Palaikastro. Cruciform swords are rather more familiar; one from Prosymna is virtually a longer version of our dagger (44 cm. against 29) except that the flange does not continue round the butt end oil the hilt—perhaps because the larger weapon had a pommel of another material, in one piece, while for a dagger the pommel was made as part of the hilt. Other L.H. III daggers from Prosymna have the flanged hilt (not cruciform) with a broad thin blade.

Among the burnt fill in Room 4 of the ‘House of the Oil Merchant’ at Mycenae excavated in 1952 was found one half of a stone mould for casting a winged axe, a type of implement (or weapon) otherwise unknown in Late Helladic or other contemporary Aegean contexts. The mould is made of a fine-grained grey stone. Its shape will be clear from the illustrations. The cut surface is flat, and measures 0·167 × 0·067 m.; the underside is convex: at the centre the stone is 0·038 m. thick, but at the ends only about 0·02 m. In one corner of the flat face is a small round hole, the socket for a peg or knob which would have projected from the other half of the mould (now lost) to ensure the two fitted correctly. There was probably a similar hole at the diagonally opposite corner, which has been broken away. This break fortunately does not prevent us restoring with certainty the shape of the casting that would be produced from the complete mould. This is shown below.

Medial winged axes are common in the upper Danube basin and northern Italy, but rarely found farther south, and not at all in the Aegean. It is known from surviving hafts that they were usually mounted (on a knee-haft) as axes (i.e. with the cutting edge in the same plane as the handle), but they could equally well be mounted as adzes. The four ‘wings’ would be hammered round to grip the ends of the haft on either side; and the ledge or ridge (‘stop-ridge’) across the blade immediately below the wings served to prevent the butt end from driving upwards and splitting the haft.

The last comprehensive study of Laconian, by E. A. Lane, was published in 1936, and to this all subsequent work in the field, including the present article, is greatly indebted. What follows is intended to develop one particular aspect of Lane's study, the identification of individual painters and their work. The need for exploration along such lines will hardly be disputed nowadays. Nevertheless, it may be worth referring to the succinct appraisal of such investigation by Dunbabin and Robertson.

The attributions here published comprise almost all Laconian vases with figure decoration found outside Laconia, in so far as they have been made known, and a number of the pieces discovered at Sparta itself. They show that a total of three painters, two of them pupils of one, were with their workshop followers responsible for the output of practically all the more ambitious Laconian vases. It remains to be seen how far this conclusion is borne out by the finds from Samos, the one considerable body of Laconian material still unpublished.