Since 1976, H. Reinder Reinders, of the University of Groningen, has led investigations at the Hellenistic city of New Halos, located on the Pagasitic Gulf in Thessaly, Greece. The present volume marks the fourth in an ongoing series documenting work at the city (Reinders Reference Reinders1988; Reinders & Prummel Reference Reinders and Prummel2003) and on the prehistoric sites in the immediate environs (Reinders 2004). The original city of (Old) Halos was located nearer the coast, on Soúrpi Bay, and was destroyed by Parmenion, general to Philip of Macedon and Alexander the Great, in 346 BC. New Halos was founded after 302 BC by Demetrios Poliorketes (in spite of his epithetic surname, ‘sacker of cities’); this new city was abandoned following an earthquake in 265 BC. Until recently, the site was well preserved, but the near-surface remains have been damaged by agricultural activity, quarrying, looting and the construction of a new highway.

New Halos is notable for its four-square, gridded city plan, covering some 50ha, laid out with 64 blocks containing perhaps 1400 houses (of which 8 have now been excavated) and inhabited by an estimated population of 9000. The city's impressive system of fortifications, first published in detail in 1988, is revisited here in light of work conducted between 1995 and 2006, providing an up-to-date presentation and assessment of the walls, towers and gateways of New Halos, with an especial emphasis on the Southeast Gate. In addition to enclosing the lower town, a triangular, westward circuit of walls took in an upper town and separately fortified acropolis keep. The whole enceinte runs 4.7km and is punctuated with at least 120 towers and a series of gateways.

The volume comprises seven chapters and four appendices. Although its title might suggest that the volume is devoted solely to the Southeast Gate of New Halos, this is a misnomer. Chapter 1 reviews the historical setting of Halos in the Classical and Hellenistic periods (fourth to third centuries BC), particularly concerning the location of Old Halos and the circumstances surrounding the foundation of New Halos (see also Appendix 4). Chapter 2 situates New Halos within its physical environment. The city incorporates ‘natural’ lines of defence and occupies a strategic location on the main overland route between central and northern Greece (hence the modern highway cutting across the site today). Next comes a comprehensive summary of the overall layout of the city, its walls, towers and gates, along with a consideration of the upper and lower towns, the limited evidence for public buildings in the former, and the better preserved and more extensively investigated housing blocks in the latter.

Chapter 3 focuses on the city gates: five of which are major and five minor. All of the gates in the lower town, both major and minor, align with important urban avenues; this suggests that the minor gates of the lower town were not merely sally ports, but rather placed so as to allow ease of access for the city's inhabitants to their fields. The acropolis keep was accessed by means of two gates, one connecting the acropolis with the upper town and one exiting the city walls. Excellent colour plans, reconstructions and photographs accompany the discussion here, as elsewhere throughout the volume.

Chapters 4 and 5 provide a detailed presentation of the Southeast Gate, based on eight seasons of fieldwork. The structure is of a ‘courtyard gate’ design; a passageway (6.78m wide) flanked by two rectangular towers giving access to a courtyard preceding the gateway proper, around 3.4m wide and originally closed by double-winged wooden doors (from which three iron nails survive). One of the project's research questions was whether the walls were constructed entirely of stone (comprising limestone and conglomerate quadrangular ashlar blocks with a rubble core), or whether stone coursing gave way to a mudbrick superstructure. The surviving stonework of the towers at the Southeast Gate reaches 3–4m in height; combined with courses of toppled masonry, here and elsewhere, it appears probable that the full elevation of the walls was attained solely using stone, and as such, was all the more impressive. Indeed, such Imponierarchitektur is especially characteristic of Demetrios Poliorketes’ gigantomania.

Chapter 6 is devoted to a discussion of the chronology of the Southeast Gate, based primarily on the numismatic evidence of about 300 coins discovered in association with the complex. These confirm its construction during the reign of Kassandros (316–297 BC; note the typo on p. 138). They also provide dating for the rapid transformation of the gate into a farmstead, following the earthquake of 265 BC, with occupation continuing to the 220s, when a fire swept through the repurposed buildings. The barn and associated structures that were built within and around the Southeast Gate following the earthquake and abandonment of the city are given little attention in the present volume, and will presumably be the subject of a subsequent publication.

Chapter 7 offers a comparative consideration of artillery towers and courtyard gates at other sites in the Late Classical and Hellenistic periods, and as such provides an important supplement to the standard treatments of Greek military architecture. The volume concludes with detailed chapter summaries, a bibliography and useful appendices documenting the foundations and walls of the Southeast Gate, a catalogue of the ‘traveller's hoard’ of 15 fourth-century BC coins discovered in 1995, and an account of the Thessalian campaign of Demetrios Poliorketes in 302 BC. This beautifully produced volume (notwithstanding its glued binding, from which pages quickly detach) makes welcome contributions on many fronts. Continuing the New Halos publication series, it will be of value to those working on Greek city-planning, domestic architecture and fortification systems. The volume is also an argument for the ongoing publication of archaeological excavations, even while active fieldwork continues, despite the revisions that new findings inevitably necessitate.