Research Items

Abstract

MYCENAEN ELEMENTS IN THE NORTH AEGEAN.— Mr. Stanley Casson has contributed to the November number of Man an interesting analysis of the traces of intrusive Mycenaean culture in Macedonia and Thrace. Mycenaean pottery is derived from nine mounds in the Thermaic Gulf, mostly in the neighbourhood of Salonika, and all but three on the seashore. All this Mycenaean ware belongs, with one exception, to the close of the third Late Minoan period. Mr. Casson's conclusion is that probably Mycenaean imports were purely local and were derived by trade along the sea route from the south to the Thermaic Gulf. He figures two rapiers from Grevena on the upper waters of the Haliacmon and one from Karaglari in the Central Bulgarian Plain which belong to the type of Mycenaean rapier common in the last two Minoan periods. The former appears to have passed up the Vardar Valley or by way of Thessaly; the latter along the Struma. East of the Struma no traces of Mycenaean culture are recorded along the European shore, and Mycenaean traders appear to have had no port of call between Salonika and Troy.