A Bronze Age town under ash
Akrotiri is a prehistoric settlement on the southern coast of Santorini, the crescent-shaped island that is what remains of the volcano of Thera. Around the seventeenth century BCE a huge eruption buried the town under pumice and ash. That material sealed buildings, furniture, pottery and wall paintings, and it is the reason the site is sometimes called the “Pompeii of the Aegean”. The comparison is only partly fair. The town was buried in a very different way from the Roman city, and no human bodies have been found at Akrotiri.
The name Akrotiri comes from a modern village nearby. We do not know what the Bronze Age inhabitants called their home. Nor were they strictly Minoans: the culture is usually called Cycladic, with strong influence from Crete visible in its art, pottery and writing.
Discovery and excavation
Local quarrying of volcanic ash in the nineteenth century had already exposed ancient remains on Santorini. Systematic excavation at Akrotiri began in 1967 under the Greek archaeologist Spyridon Marinatos, who had earlier suggested that a volcanic eruption could have affected Minoan Crete. He worked at the site until his death in 1974, and Christos Doumas directed the work afterwards. Only part of the town has been uncovered, and much of it is believed to remain beneath the ash.
Streets and multi-storey houses
The excavated area shows narrow streets, small squares and buildings of mudbrick and stone with timber frames. Many houses had two or three storeys, and some upper walls survived because the ash protected them. Staircases, windows and doorways are visible. Large storage jars were found in ground-floor rooms, and there are signs of workshops and domestic spaces.
There is also evidence of drainage, with channels running under streets and what seem to be built-in toilet arrangements in some houses. Details of this engineering are still studied, and it is best to treat comparisons with modern plumbing cautiously.
Wall paintings
Akrotiri is best known for its frescoes, which are among the finest of the Aegean Bronze Age. Well-known examples include:
- The Spring Fresco, showing red lilies and swallows against rocky ground.
- Scenes of saffron gathering, with women collecting crocus stigmas and offering them to a seated figure.
- A long miniature frieze, often called the Ship Procession, showing vessels, towns and landscapes.
- Boys boxing and fishermen carrying their catch.
These images give an unusual window into dress, ships and local nature. They often show the same sort of themes as Cretan art, but with their own character. Interpretations vary, and some scenes may depict real places, ritual events or a mix of both. The wall paintings can be compared with Pompeii wall paintings, though they are some sixteen centuries older.
Writing and trade
Some pottery at Akrotiri carries marks in Linear A, the script of Minoan Crete that has never been deciphered. Imported pottery from Crete and the mainland shows that the town took part in Aegean exchange. Objects from other regions, together with the miniature ship scenes, indicate that people here depended on ancient seafaring for commerce and for contact with distant coasts.
The Thera eruption
The eruption was one of the largest volcanic events of the last few thousand years. It left behind the caldera, a flooded crater, that defines Santorini’s shape today. Before the final blast the town seems to have been damaged by earthquakes, and signs of repairs have been found. The lack of bodies and of valuables such as gold suggests that people left before the main eruption, but this is an inference, and what happened to the inhabitants is not known.
Dating the eruption is controversial. Radiocarbon dating of short-lived material, including an olive branch found buried in ash, has pointed to the late seventeenth century BCE, roughly 1600 BCE give or take a few decades. Many archaeologists, relying on pottery styles and links with Egyptian chronology, had long placed it closer to the mid-sixteenth century BCE. Other methods, such as tree-ring dating and ice cores, have been brought into the argument. Researchers have not yet agreed on a single date, and any tidy figure should be seen as an estimate.
Effects on Crete and the Atlantis question
Ash fell on parts of Crete, and some researchers have proposed that a tsunami damaged coastal sites there. How much the eruption weakened the Minoan palaces is disputed, because Cretan centres show signs of continuing life well after it. The idea that Thera simply ended Minoan civilization is not supported by most specialists.
Because the island was destroyed in a dramatic way, some people have linked it with the story told by Plato. The account of Atlantis in Plato is a philosophical tale written many centuries later, and there is no ancient evidence connecting it with Akrotiri. Scholars generally regard the link as speculation.
Visiting and conservation
The excavated area is covered by a large protective roof. An earlier roof collapsed in 2005, closing the site, and a new structure allowed it to reopen in 2012. Many of the wall paintings are displayed at the Museum of Prehistoric Thera in Fira and at the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, while the site itself is open to visitors. Like any buried town, it remains a work in progress: conservation and excavation continue, and new studies of the paintings, pottery and the eruption still appear.