Excavations at Phylakopi in Meios. Described by D. T. Atkinson,
It. C. Bosanquet, and others. (Hellenic Society ; sold by Mac- millan and Co. 30s. net.)—The excavations described in this volume were commenced in 1897, and have been carried on with much zeal and with satisfactory results, though the place had been partially ransacked at some previous time. We cannot attempt to analyse or epitomise the contents of this most interest- jng volume, with its copious and admirable illustrations. We can only say a few words about the place. There were, then, three successive cities at Phylakopi, and the remains of the first of these indicate the existence of an earlier settlement. The last of the three was prehistoric. And what were the catastrophes which led to this succession ? That is a question to which, of course, a tentative answer only can be made. It may be said, however, that the first city was an unwalled one ; that the second was fortified, but perished in some unknown catastrophe ; that the third was the work of the same people which had occupied the second ; and that in the third we see the decay of the great in- dustry of which Mobs had been for some thousands of years the centre, the export of obsidian. In the later years of the third city the export of this substance is succeeded by the import of bronze. And then there befell the overthrow of the ruling power in Crete, and the prehistoric civilisation of the Aegean cities came to an end. What vistas in the past all this opens for us ! And how tantalising the glimpses! Was there, we wonder, an "exports and imports" controversy in the latter days of Phylakopi ?
VENN FAMILY ANNALS.
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