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In this paper the writer examines the largest group of Linear B tablets from Knossos, the great archive of records dealing with sheep. The results of this inquiry provide, it is suggested, a plausible solution to a long-standing problem, the source of the wealth of Knossos in the Late Bronze Age.The account of the great archive of sheep records from Knossos (Series D) which Ventris and Chadwick present in Documents in Mycenaean Greek remains the most influential treatment of this series taken as a whole, and must provide the starting-point for any further discussion of the texts which it contains. In the course of their account, V.C. consider what the purpose of these records is likely to have been, and rightly reject suggestions that the sheep listed on them are, for instance, hecatombs of sacrificial animals, or merely tokens of exchange, as sheep sometimes were in the ancient Near East.

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The four authors of this paper have worked in close consultation throughout the project, and present a joint result rather than so many separately initialled sections. Catling has most responsibility for the archaeological matter, Jones for the analytical work, Cherry and Jones for the interpretation of the results of the analyses and Killen for the epigraphic comment.It must be noted that a single series of numbers, 1–108, is used throughout this paper to distinguish the test samples. The significance of these numbers is made clear in the Catalogue and Concordances.

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