'Trafficking' antiquities from Melos

The issue of looting and the destruction of archaeological sites is not a new one. Cecil Harcourt-Smith, at the Annual Meeting of Subscribers in July 1897 commented about the need for excavation on Melos:

The antiquities of the islands are in many instances still comparatively unexplored, and are subject to the caprice, or even the trafficking, of the ignorant peasantry, and it is therefore highly desirable that, before it is too late, everything that can be done should be done to place on record their valuable but steadily disappearing remains of art and history.

Excavations: Kynosarges

One of the earliest excavations of the BSA in mainland Greece was at Kynosarges (1895/6, 1896/97). The work was directed by Cecil Harcourt-Smith and seen as a training exercise for the major project at Phylakopi. The intention was to locate and excavate the remains of the ancient gymnasium, though the team also uncovered remains of a later Roman bath-house. There was much promised for the work, though no satisfactory report was published.

The Times (March 26, 1896) reported:

The British School are to be congratulated on having secured a piece of work which promises to be of such importance for the study of ancient Athenian topography; and if it should prove at length to be the site of Kynosarges, it will be a source of special satisfaction to Englishmen that the site, which was eagerly sought by two English excavators at the beginning of this century, and for whose discovery Lord Byron once planned excavations, should have been brought to light by the British School at Athens.

References
Anderson, J. G. C. 1896/7. "An epigraphic miscellany." Annual of the British School at Athens 3: 106-20.
Droop, J. P. 1905/06. "Dipylon vases from the Kynosarges site." Annual of the British School at Athens 12: 80-92.
Edgar, C. C. 1897. "Two stelae from Kynosarges." Journal of Hellenic Studies 17: 174-75.
Rodeck, P. 1896/7. "The Ionic capital of the gymnasium of Kynosarges." Annual of the British School at Athens 3: 89-105.
Smith, C. 1902. "A Proto-Attic Vase." Journal of Hellenic Studies 22: 29-45.