History of research and archaeological evidence Thinking of Archaic towns in Ionia, Richard Nicholl’s famous bird’s eye view of Smyr-na in the late 7 th century BC ( will leap immediately into our minds (Cook 1958-1959, 15, fig. 3). This drawing was created over half a century ago and has oen been repro-duced since then, so that it “has become part of the collective memory”, as Jan-Paul Crie-laard recently stated (Crielaard 2009, 351). Perceived by Nicholls himself as “an imagina-tive reconstruction”(Cook 1958-1959, 15, caption of fig. 3), it was based on comparatively small sectors of the whole settlement investigated down to early Archaic levels during the Anglo-Turkish excavations at Smyrna from 1948-1951(Cook 1958-1959, 3. site plan pl. 74; Lang 1996, 235-244, fig. 101; Mazarakis Ainian 1997, fig. 395, and Mariaud 2006, 177, fig. 2, who adds the sectors of the ensuing Turkish excavations). Much of it is in fact extrapo-lation. We do not know if the density of building was consistent throughout the settlement, as assumed. Neither do we know if a largely regular grid plan was actually the layout of the early Archaic town, 1 as suggested