The L.H. IIIB deposits from Mycenae fall into two distinguishable groups. The earlier, called L.H. IIIB 1, is represented by the pottery from the destruction level in the houses east of the modern road and south of the tomb of Clytemnestra. The destruction to which we owe these deposits appears to have occurred late in the L.H. IIIB 1 phase, and probably also affected the houses on the Atreus ridge. The later group, classified as L.H. IIIB 2, has been found in buildings within the Citadel and also in isolated contexts outside the walls. The deposits from within the Citadel come from the debris of a second, more widespread, destruction which affected other centres as well as Mycenae. The differentiation of the two periods was confirmed in the Citadel House area by the finding of deposits of L.H. IIIB 2 stratified above others of L.H. IIIB 1 character. The pottery of both these phases from the Citadel House will be published in the general account of the excavations which have taken place in that area since 1959. The detailed publication of the whole vases from the L.H. IIIB 1 destruction level of the houses outside the walls is planned for the next article in this series.

Mycenaean figurines have been known for as long as Mycenaean pottery itself, for they were found both by Biliotti on Rhodes and by Schliemann at Mycenae. It was, however, Schliemann's (1878, 10 ff.) imaginative interpretation of female and bovine figures alike as representations of ox-eyed Hera that ensured their conspicuous place in the history of Mycenaean culture and religion. Not only did he illustrate a considerable number in his works, but he also preserved with great care all fragments found. Indeed, even today there are some five hundred figurines from his excavations in the National Museum at Athens, and others have gone as gifts to the museums of Europe. These finds, with those of the Greek excavations at Nauplia, supplied a happy hunting ground for early scholars of prehistoric religion such as Mayer (1892) and Reichel (1897).

In this article, the second in the series dealing with pottery found in the Citadel House excavations at Mycenae, I shall describe the nature and contents of the destruction deposit found immediately outside the South House (Citadel House area) on the north. The mass of broken pottery which lay on the built stone causeway leading from the Ramp House upwards to the northern corner of the South House confirms the division into two periods of the Late Helladic IIIB pottery from the Argolid. I have described and illustrated this in detail and compared it with other groups of L.H. IIIB pottery which have been published from Mycenae and from Tiryns.

The possibility of establishing the sequence and chronological development of Mycenaean pottery by excavation on a well-stratified site is remote. Remains of the Mycenaean period are, generally, found either on rocky outcrops or in the eroded upper levels of mounds which have been inhabited for many centuries, and there is, thus, little scope for true stratigraphic excavation. The very considerable quantity of Mycenaean pottery which has been discovered in the Mediterranean area and the studies of it which have been published in the last twenty-five years have produced the impression that Mycenaean pottery is ‘well known’. Indeed, such pottery is, on the whole, easily recognized but there is often great difficulty in dating it. Pottery from settlements has largely been neglected, on the grounds of its fragmentary condition, in favour of better-preserved examples from tombs. The result is that, in his volume dealing with chronology, Furumark was able to use, for the L.H. III period, only ten groups of pottery from domestic contexts. Moreover, if the student of today wishes to compare new material with these groups, he will find that the evidence from Mycenae (four of the ten groups) was almost completely lost during the war and that of the rest only the pottery from Athens and from Zygouries is available.

Whatever absolute dates are to be attached to the L.H. IIIA 1 period, its historical significance is indisputable. At present this significance derives mainly from events outside Greece itself, the fall of Knossos and the disruption in the Aegean area which went before it. On the mainland, although in South Greece no major event can be associated with the period, in Boeotia the fall of the palace at Thebes has been dated to L.H. IIIA 1 and has been a source of much speculation.