From the editor's preface: "Aegean Islands," the first book in the series "Archaeology," is a review of archaeological activity in the islands of the Archipelago from the nineteenth century to the present day, with emphasis on the most important field research, findings and finds of the last twenty years. The book aims at a comprehensive and collective assessment of the Aegean island world and its culture. This was the basic idea and it is this that we consider is the value and the contribution of the work to the contemporary bibliography, as archaeological approaches to the Aegean have until now been fragmentary and focused on single islands or island groups. The introduction outlines briefly the history of archaeological activity in the Aegean, the factors that stimulated it and the persons who conducted it.