792 EEPORT— 1901. 



5. External Circumstances hem'ing on the Age of Ogham Writing in 

 Ireland} By R. A. S, Macalister. 



Tlie question whether Ogham writing is of Christian or Pagan origin is not yet 

 settled. There are, however, some monuments whose situations or special 

 characteristics seem to have a bearing on the problem. Such are the stone at 

 Glenfahan, Co. Kerry, which though itself Cbristian bears what seems to be a 

 non-Christian occult formula of some sort; certain aionuments found associated 

 with tumuli, stone circles, and alignments ; and a recently discovered stone at 

 Dromlusk, Co. Kerry, which displays apparently non-Christian sj-mbolism. 



6. Report on Explorations in Crete. — See Reports, p. 440. 



7. The Neolithic Settlement at Knossos and its Place in the History of 

 Early jEgean Culture. By Arthur J. Evans, M.A., LL.D., F.R.S.' 



The hill of Kephala at Knossos, which contained the reuiains of the Palace of 

 Minos and early houses going back to the pre-Mycensean or Kamares period of Crete, 

 proves to have been the scene of a much earlier and very extensive Neohthic settlement. 

 The exploration of this by the author, in addition to the work on the later remains 

 of the ' Minoan ' Palace, has been greatly aided by the grant from the Association 

 in 1900. The remains were contained in a stratum of light clay underlying the 

 later prehistoric buildings, and which seems to have been formed by the disinte- 

 gration of successive generations of wattle and daub huts and their clay platforms. 

 This clay stratum, which had been a good deal re-used for later foundations, showed 

 a mean thickness on the top of the hill of about live metres. In some places it was 

 over seven metres thick, and went down to a depth of about ten metres below the 

 surface. It contained an abundance of primitive dark hand-made pottery, often 

 punctuated and incised, and with white chalky inlaying, more rarely chrome- 

 coloured. The ornamentation was angular and of textile derivation. Stone imple- 

 ments abounded of greenstone, serpentine, diorite, hematite, jadeite, and other 

 materials. Among these were over 300 celts or axes, besides chisels, adzes, 

 hammers, and other implements. The most characteristic implements, however, 

 were the stone maces, the occurrence of which was especially important as bringing 

 the Cretan Stone age into near relation with that of Anatolia — and indeed of 

 Western Asia in general— where, as in the early deposits of Babylonia, stone 

 maces formed a marked feature. This characteristic was shared by pre-dynastic 

 and proto-dynastic Egypt. Another interesting feature among the remains were 

 the small human images of clay and marble which supplied the ancestors and 

 prototypes of the stone images found in the early Metal-age deposits of Crete and 

 the Cyclades.'- Their Anatolian analogies were pointed out, and reasons were 

 adduced for their ultimate derivation, through intermediate types, from clay figures 

 of a Babylonian Mother-Goddess, such as those lately found in the very ancient 

 deposits at Kippur. 



The Neolithic settlement of Knossos was the first settlement of that period yet 

 explored in the Greek world, and in many ways threw an entirely new light on 

 the beginning of civilisation in that area. The contents showed a marked contrast 

 to the earliest Metal-age remains, such as those from the deposit of Hagios Onuphrios 

 in Crete,the date of which was approximately fixed by their association with Egyptian 

 relics and the indigenous copies of them from 2800 to 2200 b.c. There were 

 here no later vase-forms of the high-necked and spouted class, no traces of painted 

 pottery or metal, and no single example of the spiraliform decoration which in the 

 early Metal-age deposits is found fully developed. This negative phenomenon 

 strongly weighed in favour of the view that the -Egean spiral system was introduced 



' To be published more fully in Man, 1902, 

 ^ Figured in 3Ian, 1901, p. 146. 



