Situated on the shores of the Argolic Gulf, only a few miles away from the much later prehistoric sites of Mycenae, Tiryns, and Midea, Lerna is one of the key building blocks in our understanding of Greek archaeology. The first evidence from the site is Neolithic, and the latest settlement evidence is Mycenaean. However, the most important material from the site comes from the middle of the 3rd millennium B.C. when a remarkable large, rectangular building known as The House of the Tiles was built. Possibly never finished, with unpainted walls and doors that lead nowhere, the purpose and meaning of this building has provoked vigorous debate. Was it the house of a chief and the precursor of the later Mycenaean palaces? Or was it a communal storage facility, designed to store the elaborately sealed chests and jars found inside? No less mysterious than its use is its destruction: After a violent fire, a huge mound was built on top of the charred foundations, the area avoided by later house builders. This guide is illustrated with many plans and black and white photos.

V.5: CD-ROM contains additional information related to the book The Neolithic pottery from Lerna, as well as software, for which rights have been cleared.

In 1995 Jeremy B. Rutter presented the pottery of the Fourth Settlement at Lerna in Lerna III: The Pottery of Lerna IV. The present volume is the companion to the Rutter volume, outlining the architectural sequence of the EH III period at the site with descriptions of the major building types and other features, such as hearths, ovens, and bothroi. Careful examination of the individual buildings and their contents constitutes the core of the text. The changing settlement patterns of the site through time are considered, and sources of influences are suggested.

In this volume the archaeological, anthropological and radiocarbon data from selected sites of the Middle Helladic period are integrated to determine if there was variation between individual burials, groupings and cemeteries and to reconstruct change through time. This work was done for selective Argive sites, namely Lerna, Asine and Aspis.

The finds in the Athenian Agora from the Neolithic and Bronze Ages have added important chronological context to the earliest eras of Athenian history. The bulk of the items are pottery, but stone, bone, and metal objects also occur. Selected material from the Neolithic and from the Early and Middle Helladic periods is catalogued by fabric and then shape and forms the basis of detailed discussions of the wares (by technique, shapes, and decoration), the stone and bone objects, and their relative and absolute chronology. The major part of the volume is devoted to the Mycenaean period, the bulk of it to the cemetery of forty-odd tombs and graves with detailed discussions of architectural forms; of funeral rites; of offerings of pottery, bronze, ivory, and jewelry; and of chronology. Pottery from wells, roads, and other deposits as well as individual vases without significant context, augment the pottery from tombs as the basis of a detailed analysis of Mycenaean pottery. A chapter on historical conclusions deals with all areas of Mycenaean Athens.