More Thoughts about Thera

More Thoughts about TheraAuthor(s): J. V. LuceSource: Greece & Rome, Second Series, Vol. 19, No. 1 (Apr., 1972), pp. 37-46Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/642522 .

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MORE THOUGHTS ABOUT THERA

By j. V. LUCE

IN 1965 the notable paper 'Santorini Tephra' by D. Ninkovich and B. C. Heezen provided the first firm evidence that the Late Bronze

Age eruption of the Thera volcano directly affected the eastern part of Crete through ash fall-out.' In July 1967 Professor Marinatos's initial exploration of a settlement buried under volcanic ash near the village of Akrotiri on the south coast of Thera received worldwide publicity, partly for its intrinsic interest, but perhaps even more because the discovery was linked with the magic word Atlantis. The whole subject was then extensively aired in newspaper and magazine articles, and three books on the theme of Thera-cum-Atlantis appeared in 1969.

A new stage in the inquiry was reached when Marinatos and Ninko- vich organized an International Scientific Congress on the Volcano of Thera. The Congress, held from 15 to 23 September 1969, brought together about a hundred and forty archaeologists and scientists from relevant disciplines (vulcanology, seismology, etc.) for a massive assault on the problems of the eruption. After assembling in Athens the members held sessions in Thera and Herakleion. The papers presented at the Congress have not yet been published, but the trend of opinion on some major issues has been indicated by press summaries, and in the account contributed to Kadmos by Dr. Sinclair Hood.

Professor D. L. Page participated in the Congress, and subsequently gave a masterly survey of the whole field of Thera vulcanism and Minoan destruction in the Lord Northcliffe Lectures at University College London in February 1970. The lectures were published in November 1970 under the title 'The Santorini Volcano and the Desola- tion of Minoan Crete'.

Meanwhile the Akrotiri excavation has been making steady progress, and three full and finely illustrated reports, covering the 1967, 1968, and 1969 seasons, have been published with exemplary promptness by Marinatos. Some of the frescoes are already on display in the National Archaeological Museum at Athens, including one with the unique subject of two child boxers.

As a result of all this activity the main issues have been considerably clarified, and it is probably fair to say that attention is now focused on two main problems. The first problem concerns the time sequence of the eruption in relation to the destruction horizon on Thera, where the

The chief bibliographical references are listed at the end of the article.



38 MORE THOUGHTS ABOUT THERA

pottery so far recovered is characterized as LM IA,' and the main destruction horizon on Crete, where the pottery shows an admixture of LM IB. The second problem concerns the devastation in Crete. It is asked whether the archaeological data from the destroyed sites is con- sistent with the hypothesis of a great natural disaster, and in particular whether the main agent of desolation was earthquake, shock-wave, tsunami (seismic sea-wave), or ash fall-out.

I do not propose to say much here about the possible relation of the legend of Atlantis to the Thera cataclysm. For M. I. Finley any attempt to historicize the legend must be futile.z Other critics have been more receptive of the suggestion that it may contain some distorted historical material from the Bronze Age, and I still believe that, as J. M. Cook has put it,3 there is 'a sporting chance' that this may be so. But this does not mean that I agree with the identification of the metropolis of Atlantis (as described by Plato) with Thera, nor with the corollary (supported by quotation from the Critias) that the metropolis is an island on its own adjacent to a larger island, just as Thera lies north of Crete.4 Plato, I believe, makes it clear that the metropolis lies on the one and only island which he calls Atlantis (Critias I13 c), and that this island is extremely large (Critias i 18 a-b). In general, to try to superimpose Atlantis or its metropolis on the map of Thera seems to me a pointless, and potentially misleading exercise: pointless, because the comparison should be with pre-eruption Thera, whose configuration we shall never know in sufficient detail to make the comparison significant; potentially misleading, because the two islands now in the middle of Thera bay were both formed in historical times (in 197-6 B.c. and from A.D. 1707 on, to be precise), and it should not be suggested that they are possible vestiges of the metropolis with its alternating zones of land and water. In short, I view the identification of Atlantis as a problem in source criticism, not topography.

Reverting to the eruption, one may note that there seems to have been

general agreement at the Congress that it was a violently explosive outburst of immense power. One of the participants, P. Hederviri, had

previously published a mathematical study of the forces involved, in which he concluded that in human history only the Tambora eruption

I There are two possible exceptions. J. N. Coldstream notes that 'one vessel in the LM IB Marine Style (German Institute Negative Thera 495, right) has a reliable Theran provenance', and queries whether the imported bowl illustrated in Marinatos, Thera I, figs. 70, 7I, may not be LM IB. But Hood (1o4 n. IO) says the style of decora- tion is found in LM IA vases at Knossos. LM IB pottery was not known from Knossos before 1961, and it is obviously possible that a belated discovery of it may yet be made at Akrotiri where so much of the site is still unexcavated.

2 See his remarks in The New York Review of Books, 22 May and 4 December 1969. 3 In CR xx (i970), 225. * Galanopoulos-Bacon, 33-9, and Mavor, 29 and

I15.



MORE THOUGHTS ABOUT THERA 39

of 1815 surpassed the Thera eruption in magnitude.' On his calculations the thermal energy was 5-13 x I026 ergs, compared with a thermal energy of 1-7 x IO26 ergs for the 1883 Krakatoa eruption. When the Congress papers are published, it will be interesting to see how far these detailed estimates are confirmed. If valid, they provide a scientific basis for

comparison between the well-documented Krakatoa eruption and the Thera eruption, and support the contention that destruction and loss of life on the north coast of Crete may have been comparable to that

experienced on the coastal plains of Java and Sumatra adjoining the Sunda Strait.

In some other respects the findings of the Congress seem to have raised difficulties for those who have argued that the eruption was a

major factor in the decline of Minoan power. This is especially the case in regard to the timing of the phases of the eruption. To see why this should be so, one must consider the evidence for dating the destruction horizons on Thera and Crete, which in practice means the pottery recovered from the ruined and deserted settlements in both places. Radiocarbon dates are still too imprecise and controversial to be of much assistance. After three seasons at Akrotiri Marinatos had recovered several thousand pots, but in his opinion none is later than the 'advanced phase of LM IA'.2 On the other hand, all the destroyed Cretan coastal settlements (except Amnisos) have yielded LM IB 'Marine style' pottery, and at some of them the influence of the 'Palace

style' (LM II) has been detected.3 Assuming that the Cretan destructions occurred more or less simultaneously, which is the considered

opinion of many authorities,4 this must, it seems, have been at a date

appreciably later than the obliteration of the Akrotiri site. To posit a time-gap between phases of the eruption, which Page estimates as 'at least a decade or two',s seems the obvious way to account for the ceramic development noted at the Cretan sites.

It then becomes a question whether on the evidence the eruptive cycle on Thera can be stretched to cover this time-gap. Marinatos

supplies some facts that must be taken into account here.6 On the basis of results at Akrotiri up to the end of 1969 he distinguishes various

stages in the catastrophe. These may be summarized as follows:

(i) a strong earthquake seriously damaged the buildings; (2) 'squatters' patched up some of the ruins and continued to live on the site for a time;

I 'Volcanophysical Investigations on the Energetics of the Minoan Eruption of Volcano Santorin', Bulletin Volcanologique xxxii, 2 (1968), 439 ff.

2 Thera III, 65. 3 Thera III, 67, and Page, io. Caution is needed in interpreting some of the earlier

reports, e.g. Bosanquet on Palaikastro, where LM II is sometimes applied to what would now be called LM IB.

4 Page, I I-I2. s Page, 37. 6 Thera III, 7-8 and 64-5. Cf. C. Doumas in Kadmos ix (1970), 96-8.




(3) the volcano began to erupt, and the ruins were covered with pumice to a depth of four metres; (4) the upper parts of walls still standing were precipitated onto the already stratified pumice; (5) the major overburden of fine white ash, up to sixty metres thick in places, was deposited all over the island.

It seems clear that no more fine pottery will have been made or imported after the initial earthquake (stage i). Did a fairly long lull then occur ? Marinatos is of the opinion that stage 2 was short-perhaps two years, perhaps not more than a few months. So we have to look for our 'decade or two' between the fall of the pumice (stage 3) and the fall of the fine ash (stage 5). As Page writes: 'This apparently necessary conclusion is in keeping with the findings of Reck and Georgalas, the leading authorities on the vulcanology of Santorini; it did not commend itself to a number of eminent vulcanologists who inspected a section of the quarries at Phira one afternoon in September 1969. These were of the opinion that the whole mantle, from the lowest pumice to the top- most ash, may represent and indeed probably does represent a single paroxysmic eruption-phase.'"

The Congress, then, generated a conflict of expert opinion on this crucial matter. The view of the eruption as a 'single-phase' event poses a dilemma for archaeologist and historian. If the pumice and fine-ash layers were deposited in quick succession, then either different pottery styles were current simultaneously in Thera and Crete, or else the great eruption was not responsible for the devastation of Crete in LM IB. If forced to choose between these alternatives, Marinatos would accept that the Theran style was 'provincial' and lagged behind that of the Cretan centres.2 Sinclair Hood does not find this credible. He emphasizes the high cultural level of the Akrotiri settlement, and points out that 'Marine style' pottery penetrated to Kythera and Keos where the settlements were 'smaller and less metropolitan in character'.3 Instead, he sketches the possibility that the whole Thera catastrophe from initial earthquake to tsunamis and ash-fall was confined to the LM IA period, and that its effects were felt in Crete in this period only. He points out that there is some evidence, particularly at Knossos and Palaikastro, for a horizon of destruction by natural causes in LM IA.4 Some other cause, for example, war or invasion, will then have to be found for the LM IB destructions.

Page, it is clear, would be very reluctant to dissociate the eruption from the LM IB destruction horizon in Crete. In a crucial passage he

argues that 'the magnitude of the catastrophe, its wide extent, and in most places its finality' indicate nature at work, and not the hand of man.s

I Page, 37-8. 2 Thera III, 68. 3 Hood, 103-4. 4 Hood, 105. s Page, 12.




He therefore favours the Reck-Georgalas view that there was quite a

long interval between the first eruptive phase (initial earthquake and ejection of pumice) and the final phase (paroxysmic explosion with extensive ash fall-out and formation of caldera). Reck did careful field- work on Thera and based his conclusion on the evidence of weathering and erosion which he found on the surface of the pumice layer. Geor- galas told the Congress that the interval between the phases could have extended over decades.I I had previously reached the conclusion that the 'two-phase' hypothesis best reconciles the various lines of evidence.2 I also think that the sudden transformation of Crete from a prosperous to a desolate condition in LM IB is best explained by a natural catastrophe, and I am happy to note Page's general agreement with this point of view.

This brings us to the problem of the mechanics of the disaster, and Page discusses this in detail in a trenchant final chapter.3 Noting the evidence for fire damage on most of the destroyed sites, he thinks it most likely that conflagration completed the work done by earthquakes, and possibly also by shock-waves from the Thera explosion. He is sceptical about the tsunamis which Marinatos, Galanopoulos, and others have imagined as swamping the northern coastline. Scientific opinion at the Congress (based apparently on the underwater profile of the caldera produced by the U.S. survey ship Chain 4) favoured the view that the main thrust of the waves went north-west towards the Greek mainland. Page thinks they may have taken an easterly course, but still with little or no effect on Crete. He develops an ingenious argument based on the Gournia excavation report of little heaps of charcoal and a charred tree-trunk 'retaining its original shape' among the ruined buildings. Such remains would not have been found, he argues, if a flood wave had washed over the site after the fire, and if the flood had come first no fire would have started. The logic is quite compelling, but I suggest that Page may have underestimated the height of Gournia above sea-level. The Palace stands at an elevation of 47-05 metres (154 feet), and the lowest point in the town where the street falls away on the east is still 36-57 metres (120 feet).s I estimate that a wave 150 feet high could have struck the shore-line below Gournia and still have failed to swamp any part of the town. In the Krakatoa inundations the water penetrated far inland only where there were alluvial plains (and not a rugged slope as at Gournia), and most of the destruction and loss of life occurred in towns and villages sited at or very little above

1 Page, 15. 2 Luce, 63-74. 3 Page, 35-44. 4 For which see Mavor, I I1-17. 5 The figures are taken from the Plan in Gournia, Vasiliki, and Other Prehistoric

Sites on the Isthmus of Hierapetra, Crete by H. B. Hawes and others (Philadelphia, 1908).




sea-level. At Telok Betong (37 miles from Krakatoa), for example, almost all the houses on the plain were destroyed, and the wave reached up the escarpment to a height of 22 metres (72 feet), but the Governor's Residence on the ridge escaped untouched. The wave in the Gulf of Mirabello could have been twice as high and still stopped short of the Palace at Gournia.

All the other coastal sites from Amnisos to Zakro stand at a much lower level than Gournia. At Pseira, for instance, Seager noted that spray in heavy storms drenched many of the houses. Even allowing for land subsidence down the centuries (a fact noted also from the coves below Gournia) the town must have been very vulnerable to tsunamis. Seager makes no reference to any trace of burning in Pseira, but in describing the wrecked and deserted houses writes: 'One of the most curious facts about the finds of this period was the widely scattered condition of broken objects.' He observed that in many cases broken vases and stone vessels were found piece by piece in various rooms of the same house 'as though they had been broken and then kicked about the floors'. In one case pieces of the same lamp were found in two different houses about a hundred feet apart.' He attributed this wanton destruction to enemy action, but I find it hard to visualize sea-raiders kicking or carrying pieces of broken pottery from room to room and even from house to house. On the other hand this random scattering of fragments might well have been caused by water swirling backwards and forwards over the low ridge on which Pseira stood.

In general, given the deep and open expanse of sea south of Thera and the explosive magnitude of the eruption, I find it hard to believe that coastal areas in Crete were not seriously affected by tsunamis. When an island volcano 'blows up', one would expect the surrounding sea to be displaced outwards in all directions. Page points out that the 1926 Thera eruption produced only a six-foot wave at Crete,2 but this was a very small eruption compared with the Bronze Age cataclysm. The true parallel is Krakatoa, and here the wave-action was not directional, coasts to north, east, and west alike suffering destructive flooding. Page describes North Watcher Island, where the flood wave was only eight feet high, as lying 'eighty-two miles over the open sea north of Cracatoa'.3 But reference to the map will show that between it and Krakatoa lie the narrows of the Sunda Strait, shallow island-studded water which must have greatly impeded the passage of the tsunamis.

To my mind, the bed of pumice resting at an altitude of 250 metres

(820 feet) on Anaphi island remains a most important datum for esti- mating the magnitude of the Thera tsunamis.4 It is a pity that it was

I R. B. Seager, Excavations in the Island of Pseira, Crete (Philadelphia, 1910), 15 and 23. 2 Page, 41. 3 Page, 41. 4 Luce, 87.




not examined on the spot by some of the scientists at the Congress. Page has informed me (by letter) that a superficial inspection of some samples was made, and the opinion expressed that the deposit was airborne. But in their original publication Marinos and Melidonis argued that the grading and layering of the pumice indicated that it was water-borne,' and Marinos is reported as maintaining this view at the Congress. Here is an obvious field for further research, which might include a comparative study of the pumice banks reported from the Palestine coast, and, more recently, from Cyprus.2 It should also not be forgotten that a considerable deposit of pumice was found by Marinatos at Amnisos, and that pumice was widely scattered over the ruins at Zakro.3 Page calls the evidential value of these finds 'questionable', but in my opinion they indicate at least some coastal inundation at the time of the eruption when the sea would have been covered with floating pumice. And if this occurred at Zakro in its sheltered position well down the east coast of Crete, afortiori tsunami action was much more severe on the exposed north coast. The condition of the Zakro site seems to favour the whole theory of volcanic destruction because its unlooted LM IB contents indicate destruction by natural causes at a date somewhat later than the initial devastation on Thera.

It remains to say something about the fall of ash over eastern Crete, estimated as at least Io cm. thick by Ninkovich and Heezen. Reasons were given at the Congress for regarding this as an underestimate, as I had previously suggested, and Page now thinks it probable that 'the depth in eastern Crete was to be measured rather in metres than in centimetres'.4

Sceptics have asked why no ash has been recorded from the many excavations in the area, and Hood has suggested a systematic campaign to locate and identify it.s Volcanic ash consists largely of vitrified silica, and the ash from the deep-sea cores was identified with the deposits on Thera on the basis of the refractive index of the particles. On Thera the ash has resisted dispersal by wind and rain because the layers have been packed down by the sheer bulk of the deposit, and the surface is conserved for viticulture by an elaborate system of walls and terraces. The ash deposited over Crete will have been extremely fine-grained- ten times smaller than the smallest grain of sand, we are told-and will

Greek Geological Society iv (1959-61), 21o-18. 2 For the Cyprus deposit see L. Pomerance, The Final Collapse of Santorini (Thera),

Studies in Mediterranean Archaeology 26 (G6teborg, 1970), 24. His basic thesis is that 'the tsunamis from Santorini created a cataclysm for the populations and primitive economies of the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean shores about Izoo1200 B.C.'. I doubt if this dating will attract much support. It requires us to posit a gap of about 300 years between the beginning and the end of the eruption.

3 Page, 37. 4 Luce, 92-3; Page, 39. s Hood, Io6.




not have packed thickly enough to resist dispersal. Still visible accumu- lations are not likely to be found, though the possibility cannot alto- gether be ruled out. Investigation of samples from stratified sites by petrographic microscope sounds promising, but may be nullified by the fact that ash particles in soil tend to become devitrified, and so unidenti- fiable, after the lapse of centuries.

I conclude with some comparative material from the eruption of the Alaskan volcano Katmai in June 1912. HidervAri has calculated its thermal energy at about two-fifths that of Thera,I yet the ash-fall from it disrupted agriculture and damaged buildings at the town of Kodiak on Kodiak island io6 miles away to the east (see Plate I). Zakro is 104 miles from Thera, Gournia 92 miles, Mallia 76 miles; so my conjec- ture that the flat roofs of Minoan houses may have collapsed under the weight of ash receives some support from the Katmai data.z Page alludes briefly to Katmai, and it deserves to be better known, if only for the excellent photographic coverage by the National Geographic Maga- zine.3 An isopach map of the ash fall-out shows a highly directional pattern, with places only twenty miles from the crater receiving much the same depth of ash as Kodiak over a hundred miles away.4 This emphasizes the need for much more data from deep-sea cores to refine the isopach map for Thera.

The area round Katmai is very sparsely populated, and no lives were lost, but several small communities suffered from shortage of drinking water when the ash choked and fouled streams and wells. Much-needed relief was given to the population of Kodiak by the U.S. revenue cutter

Manning. Earthquake shocks heralded the eruption, and during the major outburst on 6 and 7 June severe and continuous tremors were recorded as far away as Seattle. Plants were destroyed and trees defoliated by sulphurous rain 300 miles away. On 9 June Ivan Orloff wrote to his wife from a fishing station about 30 miles from the volcano:

A mountain has burst near here, so that we are covered with ashes, in some places ten feet and six feet deep. Night and day we light lamps. We cannot see the daylight. In a word it is terrible, and we are expecting death at any moment, and we have no water. All the rivers are covered with ashes. Just ashes mixed with water.

At Kodiak the ash began to fall about 5 p.m. on 6 June, and the

I See above, p. 39 n, I. 2 Luce, 9o. 3 The most relevant reports will be found in the National Geographic Magazine xxiii

(1912) and xxiv (1913). Further reports on the aftermath of the eruption appeared in 1917, 1918, 1919, and 1921, and the data were published in book form by R. F. Griggs in 1922 (see Bibliography). Subsequent research indicates that the actual focus of the explosive eruption may have been at the near-by Novarupta volcano, but to avoid confusion I have throughout referred to Mt. Katmai as the focus.

4 Griggs, i. The details in my account are taken from his first three chapters.



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PLATE I. A roof broken by the weight of volcanic ash, on Long Island (near Kodiak) over one hundred miles from Mt. Katmai



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PLATE II. A slide of volcanic ash which avalanched into the town of Kodiak, damaging some houses




following day, as the deposit built up, the ash began to slide in avalanches from the neighbouring hills. Some damage to buildings was caused by these slides (see Plate II). On level ground the ash-fall at Kodiak nowhere exceeded about twelve inches but drifts of several feet accu- mulated at the foot of slopes. If it can be shown that the fall-out over Crete was up to three feet or more, then clearly avalanches may have been a significant factor in the obliteration of sites, like Zakro, lying in the hollow of hills.

The aftermath of the catastrophe is well documented for the neighbour- hood of Kodiak. The first National Geographic Report informs us that

all the crops on Kodiak island were destroyed by the ashes: the fish in the sea and in the rivers were killed and all water supplies were poisoned. A year later, in June 1913, the surrounding country presented a bleak and desolate prospect. Outside the forest the country had the appear- ance of a desert, whose gray-brown slopes were relieved only here and there by spots of green where some alder or willow pierced the ashy blanket.

But by June 1915, only three years after the eruption, there had been a remarkable recovery. 'Where before had been barren ash there was now rich grass as high as one's head. Everyone agrees that the eruption was "the best thing that ever happened to Kodiak".' By contrast, in the more deeply buried country around the volcano the recovery of vegetation was much more belated.'

The Kodiak report contrasts sharply with an Icelandic report of a very similar ash-fall (40 cm.) which led to the desertion of a district for about ten years.2 More comparative study is needed before we can pronounce on the probable rate of ash elimination and revival of vegetation under Mediterranean conditions. Also, of course, we need more data for a better estimation of the thickness of the ash deposit at various points in Crete, since this is clearly a crucial factor in the recovery process. But given that the population of eastern Crete in LM IB was high in relation to the cultivable land, it is clear that even a two- or three-year disruption of agriculture will have been a major disaster. If, in addition, there was extensive destruction of shipping by tsunamis, seaborne relief may have been inadequate to maintain the survivors and give them a chance to rebuild their earthquake-shattered settlements. In short, in the imme- diate and also in the more long-term effects of the great Thera eruption we can find a plausible explanation for the destruction and abandonment of sites which is such a marked feature of the archaeological record in eastern Crete in the fifteenth century B.C.

I Griggs, 45-6. His fifth chapter on 'The recovery of vegetation at Kodiak' contains much interesting material.

2 Luce, 92.




CHIEF BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES

COLDSTREAM, J. N., 'The Thera Eruption: Some Thoughts on the Survivors', London Institute of Classical Studies, Mycenaean Seminar, 19 February 1969-

GALANOPOULOS, A. G., and BACON, E., Atlantis: The Truth Behind the Legend (London, 1969).

GRIGGs, R. F., The Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes (The National Geographic Society, Washington, 1922).

HOOD, M. F. S., 'The International Scientific Congress on the Volcano of Thera 15th-23rd September 1969', Kadmos ix (1970), 98-106.

LUCE, J. V., The End of Atlantis: New Light on an Old Legend (London, 1969). MARINATOS, S., Thera I, II, III = Excavations at Thera: First Preliminary

Report (Athens Archaeological Society, Athens, 1968), Excavations at Thera II (Athens, 1969), Excavations at Thera III (Athens, 1970).

MAVOR, J. W., Voyage to Atlantis (New York, 1969). NINKOVICH, D., and HEEZEN, B. C., 'The Santorini Tephra', Submarine

Geology and Physics: Proceedings of the Seventeenth Symposium of the Colston Research Society (London, 1965).

PAGE, D. L., 'The Santorini Volcano and the Desolation of Minoan Crete', Supplementary Paper No. 12 of the Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies (London, 1970).

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

B. R. REES: Professor of Greek, University of Birmingham. E. J. KENNEY: Reader in Latin Literature and Textual Criticism, University

of Cambridge. I. M. BARTON: Lecturer in Classics, St. David's University College,

Lampeter. A. O. HULTON: Senior Lecturer in Greek and Latin, University of Sheffield. J. V. LUCE: Fellow of Trinity College Dublin and Reader in Classics in

Dublin University. JUSTIN GLENN: Assistant Professor of Classics, University of Georgia,

U.S.A. H. A. HARRIS: was Professor of Classics, St. David's University College,

Lampeter. W. GEOFFREY ARNOTT: Professor of Greek, University of Leeds. WILLIAM SALE: Associate Professor of Classics, Washington University,

St. Louis, U.S.A.



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More Thoughts about Thera