Work at Palaikastro in the 1994 and 1996 seasons was concentrated in Building 6 in the southern area adjacent to Main Street, where tests had previously been made in 1990–1. It was confirmed that the architectural history of the area ended before the Santorini eruption. Its later use as a walled open space was marked by the construction in LM IB of two wells. These were fully excavated and were very productive of useful stratified material. The principal building complex lay to the SE and comprised a propylon and a small central court with colonnade and surrounding rooms. The most important of these is a paved hall at the south entered by a pier and door system of Knossian type. All these features, as well as unusual decorative elements, including building materials of varying colour, frescoes and horns of consecration, distinguish this building from others at Palaikastro. The date of first construction seems to be MM IIIA (over an earlier MM II building), but this was followed by a destruction and major rebuild in MM IIIB, the period to which many of these decorative elements should belong. A violent destruction by earthquake later in MM IIIB left substantial pottery deposits in several areas of the building, which seems to have been only partially repaired before a final destruction took place. This was followed by deliberate dismantling (LM IA early?) which was far advanced when the tephra fell on an essentially abandoned plot.

The fifth excavation season at Palaikastro is reported. The principal discoveries are a floor deposit of the EM III/MM I A period, a well stratified sequence of levels from the MM II A to MM III B/LM I A periods, floor levels of the LM II and LM III AI periods, and a floor deposit of the LM III A2/B period with storage jars and a bull's head rhyton. Also noteworthy are the discovery of mason's marks on the N facade of Building 5, and fragments of the finest example of painted plaster found at Palaikastro. S. Hemingway reports an important group of metalworking artefacts from a LM III A2/B deposit.

New excavations were undertaken at Palaikastro in 1986 in the fields lying between the previous excavations and the sea. The remains of two structures and a roadway were found. Building 1 is a monumental structure, constructed in LM IA, that seems to have been destroyed in LM IB, and probably reoccupied and destroyed/abandoned in LM IIIA2. Over the top of Building 1 a less impressive structure was built and occupied then abandoned in LM IIIB. The second structure has many features in common with Late Minoan cult buildings. Building 2 is a typical LM town house of the wealthier variety, destroyed in LM IA with traces of later reoccupation in ?LM III. The roadway, called ‘Harbour Road’, seems to lead from the likely location of the Minoan harbour to the entrance of Building 1.

In Part I, a survey of the Minoan town at Palaikastro recording architectural features and sherd densities is presented. The survey allows for the town limits to be drawn and the probable location of the town centre to be identified. Possible approach routes are noted and an extension of the town to the Promontory and East Beach areas is examined. Part II is a report on building materials at Palaikastro and the Minoan quarries at Ta Skaria, where large quantities of calcareous sandstone were extracted. A magnetic survey of the central, unexcavated part of the site is presented in Part III. A short report on ancient remains at Kouremonos is given in Part IV. Part V is a summary of the previous parts, pointing out important results such as the evidence for ribbon development along approach routes in MM III/LM I and the likelihood that almost 1,000 cubic metres of calcareous sandstone used in ashlar masonry were extracted from the Minoan quarries but remain unaccounted for at Palaikastro. An appendix describes in full two deposits disturbed by ploughing.

At Easter 1981, as part of a joint Greek-British investigation of the region of ‘Toumba’ at Lefkandi in Euboea, a further area of the known cemetery there was excavated. The Greek Archaeological Service was represented by Mrs. E. Touloupa, previously Ephor of Euboea, and the British School by M. R. Popham and L. H. Sackett: the operation was under the general supervision of the Ephor, Mr. P. Kalligas.

Since the results of the previous excavations in this and the other cemeteries have recently been published with a full commentary, we have decided to give a quick and more summary account of the new finds as a supplement to the main publication to which reference is made for detailed discussion.

The large island of Euboea, which lies along the north coast of Attica and Boeotia, was little known archaeologically until recent years (FIG. 1). Nor, apart from its involvement in the Persian Wars, then as a victim of Athenian imperialism and later as a step in the expansionism of Philip of Macedon, does it play any prominent role in the accounts of ancient historians. Yet, they have left hints of its former greatness in an early period of which little was remembered. The island was known to have sent out the first colonies to Italy and Sicily in the eighth century BC and to have settled the region of North Greece, still known as Chalcidice, after the name of one of Euboea's main cities, Chalcis. They remembered something, too, of a war between Chalcis and Eretria, the other major city of the island, in which their respective allies took part, and it is this conflict which seems to have exhausted both sides and led to the eclipse of the island's pre-eminence.

In spite of recent excavations within the town, the pottery of early Hellenic Knossos is still better known from the offerings in tombs. Consequently, any domestic deposit containing a wide range of whole profiles will add considerably to our understanding of the pottery in daily use.

Two such deposits are presented here, affording a view of the Knossian sequence at the beginning and at the end of the seventh century B.C. The first is a chance find from a small rescue excavation; the second comes from a well, dug through the debris of the Minoan ‘Unexplored Mansion’, but unassociated with any architectural remains on that site.

Nearly ninety years ago students of Attic topography recorded the remains of an ancient house set on one of the southernmost ridges of the Hymettus range, a short distance below a cave sanctuary of Pan and not very far from the village of Vari in south-west Attica. The surface traces suggested an isolated country house, well planned and well built; it offered an instructive comparison with the Dema House near Ano Liosia in north-western Attica and this encouraged the excavators of the latter site to investigate further. Work on the southern site has now added another example, a noteworthy and fairly well-preserved example, to the short list of ancient Attic country houses known, explored, and published. For lack of a convenient topographical name we propose to call this site the Vari Cave House, or for brevity's sake in this report, the Vari House.

The scope and a summary of the results of the 1962–3 excavations at Palaikastro and their relation to the earlier work of 1902–6 were set out in Part I (BSA lx (1965) 249–52). There is no call to repeat those findings here, nor has further study made it necessary to make any significant revisions.

In this article we publish the Late Minoan IB and reoccupation pottery from Block N (excavation report in PK VI. 252) and from other tests, along with an account of work undertaken in the main area of the town at Palaikastro (Roussolakkos).

As before, the excavation report was written by L. H. Sackett, while M. R. Popham contributed the sections on the L.M. pottery. We are grateful to P. M. Warren for notes on the stone objects and to V. E. G. Kenna for a note on one sealstone.

The material still awaiting final study and publication consists principally of Early and Middle Minoan pottery from Kastri, tests in Block Χ, Block Γ, and Square H3.

The gaps in our knowledge of Bronze Age Euboea are so serious as to amount in some areas to a total blank. This is equally true of the periods immediately preceding and following the Bronze Age and has been commented on by a number of writers concerned with regional surveys. There remains a marked disparity between the state of our information and both the importance suggested by literary tradition and the archaeological potential of so well-placed and fertile an island.

The first excavations at Palaikastro, undertaken in the years 1902–6 by Bosanquet, Dawkins, and others, coincided with the first great period of research and discovery in Minoan Crete. They ran concurrently with Evans's early seasons at Knossos and with Hogarth's work at Zakro, not far from Palaikastro, and were in a true sense pioneer work. The series of reports which appeared in the Annual from 1901/2–1905/6, together with the later supplementary volume of Unpublished Objects and two final articles prepared for publication by various hands, built up a systematic and clear picture of one of the largest and perhaps the best preserved Minoan settlement yet excavated in Crete.

The work was undertaken on a major scale, in the third season employing up to seventy workmen for nearly three months. It produced evidence for occupation in the area from the Neolithic to the end of the Late Minoan period, with a continuing cult of Dictaean Zeus from Geometric down to Hellenistic and Roman times. In addition some careful anthropological work was done, and the phases of occupation were tied in with those of the other Minoan sites known at the time.

In the course of a survey of the Dema Wall in Attica, an isolated house of classical date was found situated immediately in front of a vulnerable section of the fortification. The question of the relation of this site to the wall and the interest of the building itself as a fifth-century B.C. house type demanded closer examination of it. This article sets out the results of its preliminary cleaning in 1958 and its complete excavation in 1960. For convenience the site is referred to as the Dema house.

The wall surveyed in this article is a continuous defensive fieldwork in north-western Attica, situated some six miles from Athens; it closes a prominent gap in the mountain-ring around the city, linking the ranges of Aigaleos to the south and Parnes to the north (Fig. 1). The local name for this wall, Τὸ Δέμα ‘The Link’, is both apt and specific and is being used in this article; in the past the wall has sometimes been referred to as the Aigaleos–Parnes wall and sometimes also as the Ano-Liosia wall from its relation to the nearest modern village.

The lack of a detailed survey of the Dema, combined with a complete absence of literary references in ancient authors, has compelled earlier writers to base their theories largely on grounds of historical probability. The divergences in their conclusions are not surprising, and clearly demonstrate the need for detailed information about the remains. We have accordingly made a field survey of the Dema and offer a full description of the wall in the belief that this will lead to a truer interpretation of its function and also its date.