When Sir Arthur Evans was establishing the chronology of the Minoan period at Knossos in the early twentieth century, Robert Carr Bosanquet and his team from the British School at Athens began to define the contemporary sequence at Palaikastro in eastern Crete. One of the aims of the recent British School excavations at Palaikastro is to refine the early excavators results and to explore social, political and environmental change within the Cretan Bronze Age. The discovery of two wells with undisturbed layers of the LM IB to LM IIIA2 periods (the fifteenth and fourteenth centuries BC) provided a rare opportunity to study the pottery chronology and development in detail, but also to look at diet, foreign connections, and religious practices at that time. One surprise was the discovery of the remains of several dogs related to the modern Cretan Tracer Hound. Another was part of an exquisite stone vase with dolphins carved in relief. This volume gives the first detailed template of LM IB to LM IIIA2 pottery at Palaikastro along with final reports on the wells excavation and complete contents by members of the international team of specialists who excavate at Palaikastro.

This second volume reporting on the excavations at the site of the `Unexplored Mansion' describes all the structures and finds that are later than Minoan. The substantial deposits that range between Minoan and Hellenistic are mainly pits, wells and wash levels with little remaining of the buildings with which they were associated; for the Hellenistic and Roman periods, until the third century AD, there are substantial remains of a succession of buildings. These provide a context for the large quantity of finds whose description takes up the bulk of the report. Pottery: sub-Minoan (M R Popham), early Hellenic (J N Coldstream), Archaic to Hellenistic (P J Callaghan), Roman pottery, amphorae and sigillata stamps (L H Sackett); lamps (H W & E A Catling); coins (M J Price); plaster sculptures (G B Waywell); terracottas (R A Higgins); metal objects (K Branigan); bone objects (L H Sackett); glass vessels (J Price). The enormous number of drawings and photos supporting the description of these finds will ensure that this becomes a valuable work of reference.

This second volume reporting on the excavations at the site of the `Unexplored Mansion' describes all the structures and finds that are later than Minoan. The substantial deposits that range between Minoan and Hellenistic are mainly pits, wells and wash levels with little remaining of the buildings with which they were associated; for the Hellenistic and Roman periods, until the third century AD, there are substantial remains of a succession of buildings. These provide a context for the large quantity of finds whose description takes up the bulk of the report. Pottery: sub-Minoan (M R Popham), early Hellenic (J N Coldstream), Archaic to Hellenistic (P J Callaghan), Roman pottery, amphorae and sigillata stamps (L H Sackett); lamps (H W & E A Catling); coins (M J Price); plaster sculptures (G B Waywell); terracottas (R A Higgins); metal objects (K Branigan); bone objects (L H Sackett); glass vessels (J Price). The enormous number of drawings and photos supporting the description of these finds will ensure that this becomes a valuable work of reference.

Earth's life story is written in its rocks. They are time machines, which can transport us over billions of years through the metamorphoses by which our planet was forged. How to Read a Rock combines a guide to deciphering these sagas of our planet's past with case studies of the rocks and landscapes that best tell those tales. Using stones as storytellers, it narrates the prehistoric forces of shifting continents; considers how manufactured rocks are transforming Earth's geology; travels with space probes to distant moons and planets; and asks what our geological past can predict of our future. Exceptional photographs and infographics illustrate a text from one of the world's great geological storytellers, revealing layer by layer the secrets written in stone.