Excavations were undertaken by me on behalf of the Cretan Exploration Fund in the spring of 1901, in pursuance of a programme for exploring the Eteocretan country. Primitive remains had been noted in the Zakro district, by Captain Spratt in 1852, and been more fully described by Prof. F. Halbherr in the Antiquary for 1892 (p. 153). They were visited later by others, notably Prof. L. Mariani in 1893. Mr. A. J. Evans in 1894 and 1896 visited the upper valley, and besides giving a short account of what he saw in the Academy (July 4, 1896), preserved very full notes made on the spot. When a coastal site in East Crete was desired, he recommended these remains, near a natural port, the last on the directest sea-route from the Aegean to the Cyrenaic shore, to my attention.

The large double cavern situated to south-west of, and about 500 feet higher than Psychro, avillage of the upland Lasithi plain in Crete, has long been known to contain early votive objects (Plate IX. 1). The discovery was made by peasants about 1883, who were in the habit of housing goats and pigeons there, and in 1886 the noise of it brought to the spot Professor F. Halbherr in company with Dr. J. Hazzidakis. Their mission was to recover as many objects as possible from the peasants' hands, but also in the event they dug over about two square metres of the embanked terrace before the cave in the hope of finding remains of an altar. After their departure the peasants continued to burrow from time to time among the boulders in the upper cave, and to find bronzes, many of which were bought by Mr. A. J. Evans in 1894. In 1895 the latter, with Mr. J. L. Myres, visited the spot, and the same explorer, returning in 1896 and finding in Psychro a piece of an inscribed libation table, made a sinking into the deposit under the north wall of the upper grot, where the table had been found, and unearthed some objects. In 1897 came Mons. J. Demargne, of the French School at Athens, and boring under the south-western wall, found a second piece of a libation table, uninscribed.

The operations of the British School for the first two months of the excavation season of 1900 extended more or less over the whole site of Knosso the summit of the Kephala hillock excepted, which had been bought and reserved by Mr. Evans. In selecting this wide area I had for objective the cemeteries prior to the Geometric Period, the situation of which was, and I regret to say still is, unknown. In the event I found what I had not expected, namely a well-preserved early town.

No abstract

The circumstances under which a find of impressed clay nodules was made in a Mycenaean house at Kato Zakro, in East Crete, in May 1901, are related in the Annual of the British School at Athens vii. p. 133. The nodules are of a fine clay baked, probably intentionally and not by the conflagration which destroyed the house, to varying shades of red. A great number are broken, but the more perfect, including many bearing two and three impressions, show a groove on one edge, about an eighth of an inch deep and a little more wide, scored with straight and oblique scratches. This is the impress of something Cylindrical, to which the nodule was pressed while still wet. The appearance of the clay in the grooves shows that this object was not textile, and it may most reasonably be supposed to have been a reed, perhaps a papyrus stalk. The number of nodules is in all about 500.