  We investigate a chain of capacitively coupled Josephson junctions in the
regime where the charging energy dominates over the Josephson coupling,
exploiting the analogy between this system and a multi-dimensional crystal. We
find that the current-voltage characteristic of the current-driven chain has a
staircase shape, beginning with an (insulating) non-zero voltage plateau at
small currents. This behavior differs qualitatively from that of a single
junction, which should show Bloch oscillations with vanishing dc voltage. The
simplest system where this effect can be observed consists of three grains
connected by two junctions. The theory explains the results of recent
experiments on Josephson junction arrays.
