Abstract
AMONG recent excavations and research in Greece recorded in the Annual of the British School of Archæology at Athens (35, Session 1934-35), first place in interest and importance is taken by the work of the School in Ithaca. Mr. W. A. Heurtley, who was in charge, describes the results of the excavation of the Helladic settlement at Pelikáta, which Leake and others have identified with the home of Odysseus as described by Homer. Pelikáta is a hill or spur linked on one side with the central peak of the island, and sloping down to the sea in a series of terraces on its three other sides. Thus commanding three bays, and having a flat top, it was, as Mr. Heurtley points out, an admirable site for a primitive community interested in trade or piracy or both. Virtually no trace of buildings remained when investigation began ; but there were vestiges of the wall which had enclosed the promontory. Excavations on the site yielded evidence of an early Helladic settlement, which on the evidence of the pottery, Mr. Heurtley concludes, reached the island in Early Helladic II from Corinthia, and afterwards received an accession in a new element in the population, which Minyan ware indicates to have come from the south of Thessaly as its immediate place of origin, with an ultimate derivation from Bronze Age Macedonia.
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Archæological Research in Greece. Nature 142, 168–169 (1938). https://doi.org/10.1038/142168c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/142168c0