In this article, the second in the series dealing with pottery found in the Citadel House excavations at Mycenae, I shall describe the nature and contents of the destruction deposit found immediately outside the South House (Citadel House area) on the north. The mass of broken pottery which lay on the built stone causeway leading from the Ramp House upwards to the northern corner of the South House confirms the division into two periods of the Late Helladic IIIB pottery from the Argolid. I have described and illustrated this in detail and compared it with other groups of L.H. IIIB pottery which have been published from Mycenae and from Tiryns.

New dates and new finds give cause to look again at that central issue in later European prehistory — the origin of wheeled light vehicles of battle.

Recent discoveries in different parts of the Near East have led the authors to reconsider the early history of metal driving bits. These now seem to go back into the third millennium BC, which is much earlier that the evidence previously indicated. The paper also includes a brief discussion of the links -if these existed at all -with early bridle bits made of organic materials from the southern Urals-Volga area.The recent discovery at Tel Haror in the northern Negev of a copper/bronze bridle bit on an equid buried in a cultic context dating to the seventeenth century BC (MB IIB) is important in several respects ( Figure 1). 1 It is the earliest metal bit from a well-dated context, and it is the only metal bit of the second millennium BC actually to have been found in the mouth of an animal.The Haror bit belongs to a well-known type of early cast-metal bit with circular cheekpieces, often studded on the inner faces, and a single-bar mouthpiece. Finds of this bit type are widely distributed: from Tell el-Amarna in the middle Egypt, through Tell el-'Ajjul (ancient Gaza) and Ras Shamra on the Syrian coast, to Tell al Haddad in eastern Iraq. There are also examples from Mycenae and Thebes in mainland Greece, and varients reportedly from eastern Turkey and Luristan in west-central Iraq. 2 Most, if not all of these bits date within the second half of the second millennium BC. 3 They are driving bits, with the emphasis on enforcing directional control from a vehicle (i.e. from a distance behind the horses' mouths) -something that is much less difficult from the

Summary Material remains of harness elements from different parts of the Roman Empire have contributed to a new interpretation of the harness depicted on funerary reliefs of the second‐third centuries AD from north‐western Europe and on other figured documents, such as Trajan's Column in Rome (dedicated in 113 AD). As recent experimental reconstruction has shown, the curved wooden plaques, held firmly in place by a metal bow, may have formed a precedent for the collar and hames developed during the Middle Ages into the form still in use today. The most important innovation was the introduction – no later than the second century AD – of single draught between shafts, replacing traditional paired draught with pole and yoke. There is even some evidence that other elements of modern harness, such as traces and the whippletree, hitherto considered to be medieval inventions, were also known during the period of the Roman Empire.

This paper looks at the period of the first regular use of pictorial vase painting in Crete: LM II–III A2 early. The focus is on Knossos, the major findspot for Minoan pictorial pottery of this distinct pre-destruction period. The shapes, motifs and overall character of Minoan pictorial pottery are discussed, as well as the extent of its influence on the earliest Mycenaean figure-style vase-painting.