January i8, 191 2] 



NATURE 



;8i 



subsidiary results are equally important : first, the 

 discovery of the Laconian style of vase-painting, and 

 its identification by Mr. Droop with the style previously 

 known as " Cyrenaic " ; secondly, the recovery of the 



Fig. 1. — Remaias of the Roman Theatre in the precinct of Artemis Orthia, looking towards Mount Taygetos, 



great harvest of inscriptions, many of them in Doric 

 dialect, relatinj^ to the worship of Artemis Orthia and 

 the contests of the boys at her shrine, which have 

 been published by Mr. Woodward. The director shows 

 how important to the history of Greek pottery 

 i^ the accurate chronology of the Laconian 

 are which this excavation has rendered pos- 

 sible. Of inscriptions only a few new ones 

 have been found, which Mr. Woodward pub- 

 lishes. A minor excavation at a shrine of 

 the Eleusinian Demeter at Kalyvia tis Soch;is, 

 not far off, has yielded some of these. Some 

 carlv pottery from a site at Geraki is described 

 bv Air. Wace, and Mr. H. A. Ormerod writes 

 on thr topo^Taphy of Bardounia and north- 

 eastern Maina. 



.An interesting paper by Mr. C. H. Hawes, 

 on "Some Dorian Descendants?" may fitly be 

 mentioned in connection with the Laconian 

 •work. Mr. Mawes has made interesting re- 

 searches into the skull-form of the modern in- 

 habitants of Maina, the peculiar dialect of which 

 part of Laconia is certainly of Doric origin, 

 and of Sphakia in Crete, where the dialect 

 shows possible Doric peculiarities, and where 

 the native stock has been kept purest from 

 foreign admixture, since the Turks never tried 

 to hold .Sphakia, and only once penetrated to 

 its fastnesses. Mr. Hawes shows that the 

 typical skulls of both Mainotes and .Sphakiotes 

 show a peculiar brachycephalic form very like 

 that of the Albanians, and since the Dorians 

 Certainly came from Illyria, he tentatively re- 

 irds this as the typical Illyrian-Doric skull- 

 rm, and the Mainotes and Sphakiotes as 

 pical Dorians. This may be, but the Alba- 

 ians are not, and never were, Greeks, any 

 ore than the Italians are or were; whereas 

 >orians were the most Greek of the Greeks. Doric 

 reek was probably the freest of forei).jn admixture; 

 It the .Albanian language is totally different from 



N'O. 2203. VOL. 88] 



Greek, and forms a distinct Indo-European linguistic 

 sphere, equally apart from Greek, Slav, or Italian. 

 Also this hyperbrachycephalic form of skull is found in 

 Asia Minor, especially among Kurds and Kizilbashes. 

 We doubt the identity of 

 Albanians and Dorians. But 

 the paper is an extremely 

 suggestive one. 



The rest of the "Annual " 

 is taken up by a number of 

 interesting minor articles, 

 the most important of which 

 is that by Messrs. Wood- 

 ward and Ormerod, describ- 

 ing a journey in south- 

 western Asia Elinor, where 

 Mr. Woodward has found 

 inscriptions, and Mr. 

 •Ormerod important pre- 

 historic sites, with pottery of 

 considerable interest, which 

 he describes. It belongs to 

 a class distinct from that of 

 the ^-Egean, and the painted 

 sherds perhaps show 

 analogies to the geometric 

 ware found by the Pumpelly 

 expedition at Anau in 

 Turkestan, and by de Mor- 

 gan at Tep^ Musy^n (Mous- 

 sian) and Susa, in Persia. 



Mr. Hasluck continues his 

 . descriptions of the extant 

 relics of Latin domination in the /Egean, which have 

 been a feature of recent volumes of the "Annual." 

 This year he describes the traces of the Genoese rule 

 and of the Giustiniani in Chios, besides a quaint French 



Fig. 2. 



-Contrasted Head-forms from Sphakia: Mediterrano 

 and Dori.in? (cephalic index 88'7). 



73M) 



the 



-nscription recording the conquest of Adalia by 

 Pierre I., King of Jerusalem, in 1361. He also con- 

 tributes an article on the once-famed medicinal earth, 

 terra sigillata or terra I.ewnia, which wasi an im- 



