Under that law the 19 accredited foreign institutes may perform systematic excavation in Greece with the permission of the government.

[2] The BSA's activities include a regular programme of lectures and seminars, a series of scholarships and bursaries, the publication of a research journal, reports, monographs and online works,[8] Athens-based courses for undergraduates, postgraduates and teachers, as well as archaeological fieldwork.

The Directors, who have included many distinguished figures, have tended to be in Greece for only part of the year, keeping roles in the UK or elsewhere.

The BSA also operates a branch at Knossos in Crete, including one of the island's main archaeological libraries.

It has its own director, currently (2019) Evangelia Kiriatzi, its own research scientists, teaches its own courses, offers its own grants, and issues its own publications.

Fitch Laboratory was founded during a period of growing interest in establishing the provenience of pottery discovered during excavation.

To the contrary, Carl Blegen and his supporters were affirming a mainland Greek origin for and importation to Crete of Mycenaean pottery.

The science of geology provided them with petrology, the study of the rock composition of the clay from which the pots were made.

Microscopic examination of a thin section of pot material reveals the minerals present in the grains of clay.

"[10] The general method exploits two natural phenomena: the tendency to form stable atoms with a given energy structure (number and configuration of electrons and neutrons, etc.

Of the three general types of activation, the mass spectrometer bombards the sample with a stream of electrons, or electrical current, until it reaches temperatures high enough to dissociate the atoms into a plasma, or cloud of superenergized ions, in which the electrons have acquired the energy to expand into unstable orbits.

Specrometers are used less frequently in archaeology as they destroy the sample; in fact, Law 3028 forbids destructive tests of artifacts.

The gamma photons are diffracted for a spectrum read-out; in addition, the half-life of the decaying isotope can be calculated, which also is characteristic and serves as an identifier.

Moving from the inner orbits to the outer, they fall back to the inner, giving up the induced energy as x-rays of wavelengths characteristic of the element.

In 1960, Sinclair Hood, director of the British School, in the process of attempting to determine whether some pottery was Minoan or Mycenaean, contacted the new laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art at the University of Oxford, which was already using activation analysis.

The proposal was kept secret until the British School could obtain permission from the Hellenic Ministry of Culture with the assistance of Spyridon Marinatos, Inspector-General of the Archaeological Service.

Agnes Conway was admitted to the British School at Athens under Director Alan Wace for the 1913-1914 session, along with her friend Evelyn Radford with whom she had attended Newnham College, Cambridge.