In the sites excavated by me in West Greece at Polis, at Graves near Astakos, at Halikais in Zakynthos, I cannot differentiate the rough pithoi of the Early and Late Bronze-Age. Lug forms which occur in Macedonia and Thessaly in the Early Bronze-Age appear to be still in use in the Late Bronze-Age. At Graves and at Halikais the specific forms of the Early Bronze-Age, levigated pottery, such as sauce-boats and handles with triangular section are not in common use in Mycenaean deposits. (Middle Bronze-Age forms and decoration do overlap into and influence the Mycenaean period.) I have therefore catalogued together all the rough pottery found at Polis, except a few vases which are definitely Mycenaean in shape, and then ascribed the remaining vases to their categories. There is very little levigated EH pottery at Polis and it seems likely that much of the rest of the EH pottery is late or transitional to the Middle Bronze-Age. The only pure (or nearly pure) Middle Bronze-Age deposit yet found in Ithaca is the small one at ‘P., First hole’, but the presence of the Middle Bronze-Age people in West Greece is proved by graves in Kephallenia and Leukas, and no doubt their settlements will eventually be discovered.

Dr. Kunze's splendid presentation alone makes possible the study of Cretan shields, many of which he put together with his own hands. Even where I differ from his conclusions I have to start from the premises he laid down from his careful and scholarly analysis, and his magnificent illustrations.

Dr. Kunze dated the beginning of the Cretan shields by the date of certain gold bands (op. cit. pp. 247, 266) found with Attic vases, from the end of the ninth to the beginning of the seventh century B.C. He has subsequently lowered the date of at least some other Attic vases by some fifty years, and he has told me that he is now disposed to date the shields also later than he did.

Dr. Kunze was naturally looking for an early date, since Johansen had affirmed the dependence of Protocorinthian vase-painting on Crete, particularly on Cretan metal-work, in which he was firmly supported by Payne.

Towards the end of Schliemann's excavations at Mycenae in 1877 a small group of gold objects was found, in the region just south of the Grave Circle, by his engineer Drosinos and the Greek archaeologist Stamatakis. Owing to the circumstances of its discovery, this find received less mention than its importance deserved, and, while individual objects from it have been frequently referred to and illustrated, its existence as a closed group has been obscured, and is not even recognised in the inventory or arrangement of the Athens National Museum. Consequently its exact nature and chronological place at Mycenae have never been defined; Schliemann himself, Tsountas and Wace thought it the remains of a Shaft Grave that was partially plundered and destroyed when a drain was built across it in LH III (see BSA XXV p. 119 and plan, Pl. I). Schuchhardt, followed by Stais in the Museum Catalogue, thought it a hoard, and Karo considers it a parallel to the Tiryns Treasure. It has been suggested to me by Professor Wace that a further study and more adequate illustration of these objects might decide this point and also discover some grounds for assigning them to a definite place in the chronological order of Mycenae finds.

The following inscription was found in June 1939 outside the stable of a farmhouse which is situated in a field by two water-mills, on the east side of the main road about half-way between Anavyssos and Phoinike, in the ancient deme of Anaphlystos in the south-west district of Attika. The stone is used for a seat, and lies by the stable door, with the wider inscribed face turned to the ground, the narrower to the wall, and the top covered with a cushion of sacking. It is a rectangular poros block, comparatively smoothly dressed, and inscribed on two adjacent faces (pl. 29c), the narrower of which (pl. 29a) is here referred to as A, the wider (pl. 29b) as B. There are no visible traces of any letters on the two corresponding faces, which are dressed in the same way. The two smallest, or end, faces are more roughly shaped and dressed. The stone is much pitted by the weather, and all the edges are worn smooth.

1. Beroea. In the Old Metropolis, headquarters of the local Boy Scouts, in a collection of miscellaneous marbles, a Hellenistic marble stele, broken at the bottom, damaged along the lower two-thirds of the left edge. H. 0·475 m.; w. (between preserved sides) 0·392 m.; th. ca. 0·10 m. Letters, ll. 1–2, 0·02 m. (0, 0·015 m.), l. 3, 0·015 m.; interspace, ll. 1–2, 0–005 m., ll. 2–3, 0.001 m.

Relief: r., tree along trunk and branch of which a serpent coils. In front of tree at foot, small boy with arms folded, head facing his r. Second from r., man clad in cloak, turned to his r. and shaking hands with similarly clad man in l. of relief area. Between the two men, another small boy facing his r. (Pl. 30, no. 1).

Payne's work on the Acropolis has given us a new picture of early Attic sculpture—a fresh and dewy garland, one of the finest flowers of which is his revelation of the personality of a supreme artist, the creator of the peplos Kore 679, the Rampin rider, the head 654 (Payne, Archaic Marble Sculpture from the Acropolis, pls. 11, 11a–c, 29–33, 133) and—πρὸς δὲ τόδε μέγα θαῦμα: the finest of all archaic Attic reliefs, the diskophoros Nat. Mus. 38. This last work is not included in Payne's list: and so, convinced though I am that the mere mention of this attribution is sufficient to establish it, I am bound to offer arguments in its support.

Let us compare it with the work which stands chronologically closest to it, the head 654. We must keep in mind that, at that period, a relief was not simply a projection on the slab of the side view of the body, but a free composition of the side and front view. We must therefore compare all the aspects of the head 654 in turn with the diskophoros.