TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION H. 625 
has collected during the past three years, obtaining over 1,700 pottery 
fragments and a large number of stone implements. These will be described 
in the Bulletins of the Natural History Society of New Brunswick. The 
material collected by Matthew, Kain, McIntosh, and the greater part of 
the Smith, London, and Balmain collections, are in the Natural History 
Museum at St. John, N.B. Bailey’s and part of London and Balmain’s 
collections are at the University of New Brunswick, Fredericton. Part of 
the Smith collection is in the Museum at Chatham, N.B. 
8. The Excavations at Sparta of the British School at Athens. 
By BR. M. Dawxrys. 
(a) Work at the Orthia.—The sanctuary is now finished The chief 
results of the year have been the discovery of walls of the hieron at different 
periods and fresh light thrown on the earliest periods of the site. The 
sanctuary occupied what was a natural hollow on the bank of the river, 
always subject to floods. The cult began certainly as early as the ninth 
century, and very likely earlier. No trace of znything Mycenean has been 
found. The earliest thing is a local style of geometric pottery, of which 
there is so much that its manufacture must have continued unaltered for a 
very considerable time. 
The first trace of cult was in a patch of black ashes mixed with burned 
fragments of bones and geometric sherds and pieces of bronze all lying 
on the native soil in the middle of the hollow. Sometime later the hollow 
was paved in great part with a paving of cobble stones and this paved 
space surrounded with a wall. Pieces of this wall have been found. 
There are no remains of any temple as early as this, just as of the first 
stage of the hieron represented by the débris below the pavement there are 
no remains of either temple or altar. The next stage of the hieron shows 
a considerable development. To it belongs the great archaic altar, the remains 
of the primitive brick and wood temple, and the great mass of votive 
offerings extending downwards to the close of the seventh century. The 
hieron at this period was larger than it had been before. On the east its 
limit was marked by a wall, which itself, however, belongs to a good deal 
later date, probably to the sixth century, and on the west the débris of this 
period were found considerably outside the line of the old wall. 
In this condition the hieron must have lasted at least two hundred 
years (800-600 B.c.). It saw the rise of the Laconian school of vase- 
painting, and its first two periods, Lac. I and II, and the period of the 
fine ivory carvings which have been such a feature of this site. They all 
fall within this period, mostly late in it. At the end of this stage inscrip- 
tions begin, 7.e., just before 600 B.c. 
About the year 600 B.c. there was a change. The primitive temple 
was destroyed, probably by a flood, and the level of the hieron raised by 
bringing in a mass of river sand and grayel. The hieron was thus 
changed from a hollow into a flat-topped artificial mound. On the east 
side of this an altar was built, of which traces were found and removed, 
and on the west the great temple. The altar occupies exactly the site of 
the earlier altar, the temple very nearly. The hieron was now very much 
larger, and was surrounded by a thick wall. A long stretch of it was found 
west of the temple, and another piece to the south, close to some Hellenistic 
houses alongside of the present course of the millstream. The wall between 
it and the temple to the west is a thin wall, which stood at the edge of 
the heap of sand to support it. The wall west of the altar also marks the 
edge of the sand, but it is likely that here also the hieron limit was some- 
what wider. The temple was archaic Doric, and the pediment was probably 
decorated with two lions facing one another in painted sculpture. A small 
1909. Ss 
