Summary. The thousands of MM clay sealings in Room 25 of the First Palace of Phaistos testify to the importation into Crete of the Near Eastern system of storeroom administrative controls. Minoan practice then diverged from the Near Eastern model. The development of a recognizably Minoan sealing system is illustrated by the LM IB sealing deposits from Ayia Triada, Zakro and Khania (with something of its evolution traceable via Mallia and Knossos). Despite many common practices in LM IB, however, important local differences coexisted within this Minoan system, perhaps suggesting the absence of a single overriding administrative authority at this time.

The Early Helladic IIB sealings from Lerna have rarely been considered as functional documents even though they are often called as evidence for EH II economic complexity, for elite control of resources or even for ‘central place’ redistribution. Close analysis of the sealings, however, casts doubt on whether the documents support these economic or social interpretations, seeming rather to point to the grafting of a foreign system of resource management onto a less developed society. After examining the specific functions of the sealings —‘who did what?’— we consider their implications for social organization. This evidence is then linked to the wider picture: a whole range of new sealing practices as well as the striking innovations in architecture and construction which appear at much the same time. We conclude that these developments are largely due to the arrival of foreign (probably Anatolian) traders at Lerna early in EH IIB.

Summary. Middle Minoan Knossos shares in the sealing evolution which we have seen elsewhere on the island (SSMC I): the earliest sealings are placed directly on objects, a practice which, in time, generally yields to nodules which hang on cords (first crescents, then prismatic types) and flat‐based nodules which were pressed over leather strips, presumably parchment documents. We have no LM IB sealings from Knossos, a site which might have been expected to have evolved its own local version of the Minoan sealing system. Sealings from the final destruction deposits at Knossos are at once closer to the earlier practices from Phaistos and to the later system known from the mainland. The mainland connection is seen in a reduction of sealing shapes (especially the disappearance of flat‐based nodule types) and in a non‐intensive, non‐elite pattern of seal use.

JUDITH WEINGARTEN SOME UNUSUAL MINOAN CLAY NODULES I. IntroductoryClay nodules, often badly damaged by the fires that baked them hard, are in themselves unexciting artifacts. Even the clay of which they are made resists provenance-analysis: visual identification is treacherous, 1 while non-destructive testing is only now possible in the most favourable circumstances. 2 Yet detailed study of nodules, their shapes and peculiarities, can yield worthwhile results. 3 While it is not yet possible to chart the evolution of nodule shapes over time, 4 a site-by-site analysis of the shapes in LM IB destruction deposits, for example, shows up clear differences between major sites. We can distinguish eleven classes of shapes (Fig. 1) Table l. 5 used in LM IB; a typological inventory of classes used at Zakro, Ayia Triada and Chania is summarized in

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