These tiny sculptures were reportedly found in the vicinity of modern Sparta, but a more likely provenance is Kouphovouno, a low mound site about two kilometres south-south-west. This was, as it were, the Sparta of Neolithic Lakonia, but settlement here cannot be firmly documented before the last third of the sixth millennium, that is in the Middle Neolithic period. By this time, however, attested settlement in Lakonia was attaining a wider distribution. Apart from Kouphovouno and (probably) the Alepotrypa cave, there is evidence of occupation near modern Apidia in the west Parnon foreland south-east of Geraki. At Apidia, however, the pottery in question was not unearthed in controlled excavation but picked up during surface survey, and so this is perhaps an opportune moment to stress how flimsy is the basis of evidence on which any reconstruction of the prehistoric (‘textfree’) period in Lakonia rests.