The Late Bronze Age Eruption of Santorini Volcano and Its Impact on the Ancient Mediterranean World

Elements ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 185-190 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy H. Druitt ◽  
Floyd W. McCoy ◽  
Georges E. Vougioukalakis
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Direct Relationship ◽  
Atmospheric Effects ◽  
Late Bronze Age ◽  
Regional Impacts ◽  
Mediterranean World ◽  
Minoan Crete ◽  
Santorini Volcano ◽  
Archaeological Excavations

The Late Bronze Age eruption of Santorini occurred 110 km north of Minoan Crete (Greece). Having discharged between 48 and 86 km3 of magma and rock debris, the eruption ranks as one of the largest of the last 10,000 years. On Santorini, it buried the affluent trading port of Akrotiri. Modern volcanological research has reconstructed the eruption and its regional impacts in detail, while fifty years of archaeological excavations have unraveled the events experienced by the inhabitants of Akrotiri during the months that led up to the eruption. Findings do not favour a direct relationship between the eruption and the decline of the Minoan civilization, although tsunamis and atmospheric effects may have weakened Cretan society through impacts on shipping, trade and agriculture.

Mycenaean civilization

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeremy Rutter
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Late Bronze Age ◽  
Stages Of Development ◽  
Historical Reality ◽  
Mediterranean World ◽  
The Mediterranean

Mycenaean civilization takes its name from the hilltop citadel of Mycenae in the Argolid, celebrated in Homer’s epics as “rich in gold” and the capital of Agamemnon. In 1876, Heinrich Schliemann, fresh from his excavations at Troy, which in his view had established the historical reality of the Greeks’ legendary siege and sack of that city, unearthed five astonishingly rich tombs at Mycenae and claimed them to contain the burials of Agamemnon and his followers, thus inaugurating the study of Greece’s Late Bronze Age (LBA) past. One and a half centuries of subsequent fieldwork have exposed the remains of hundreds of settlements and thousands of tombs characterized by the distinctive material culture termed Mycenaean that flourished for over six centuries (c. 1700–1050 bce). This lengthy duration of the mainland Greek LBA (better known as the Late Helladic [LH] or Mycenaean era) is conventionally subdivided into three major stages of development: pre-palatial or early Mycenaean (LH I–IIB; c. 1700–1425/1400 bce); palatial (LH IIIA1–LH IIIB2; c. 1425/1400–1200/1190 bce); and post-palatial (LH IIIC; c. 1200/1190–1050 bce). The regions within which Mycenaean material culture was dominant changed significantly as a function of time, as did the culture’s external contacts within the Mediterranean world and continental Europe.

Ethnicity, Entrepreneurship, and Exchange: Mediterranean Inter-island Relations in the Late Bronze Age

1990 ◽  
Vol 85 ◽  
pp. 115-153 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Bernard Knapp
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Copper Production ◽  
Late Bronze Age ◽  
Central Mediterranean ◽  
Mediterranean World ◽  
Production Distribution ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Bronze Age ◽  
Metals Production

New data on Late Bronze Age Cypriot and Aegean material found in the eastern, southern, and central Mediterranean significantly alter timeworn concepts about the scope and extent of Mediterranean trade systems. Recent geochemical and statistical analyses highlight the pivotal role played by the production, distribution, and consumption of copper oxhide ingots in the Bronze Age economies of the wider Mediterranean world. As a consequence, it is possible to propose some basic hypotheses on metallurgical origins, and on the possible orientation of Mediterranean Bronze Age trade and traders.Two basic issues are involved: 1) did increased trade with the eastern Mediterranean stimulate production and intensify exchange mechanisms in the central Mediterranean? 2) or did eastern Mediterranean traders simply plug into an existing politico-economic system that somehow monitored metals' production and exchange further west?This paper also evaluates the impact of new archaeological and metallurgical data on traditional interpretations of Cypriot copper production and exchange in its Late Bronze Age Mediterranean context. Whilst Cypriot copper production remained important to the economy of the Bronze Age Mediterranean, it also made key tactical and commercial adjustments to the coming Age of Iron. Mechanisms of Mediterranean trade are still difficult to pin down, and it is unrealistic to do more than propose basic models of entrepreneurship, ethnicity, and exchange.

Barbarian Europe and Early Iron Age Greece

1965 ◽  
Vol 31 ◽  
pp. 229-240 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. M. Snodgrass
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Late Bronze Age ◽  
Aegean Area ◽  
The Past ◽  
The North ◽  
The People ◽  
Mediterranean World ◽  
The Relationship

This paper is concerned with the nature of the relationship that existed between Central Europe and the Aegean area in the early 1st millennium B.C. Interest in Aegean-continental connections has been strong for a considerable time, but has been intensified, particularly from the continental standpoint, in the past fifteen years. Although some of these studies have been concerned with the contacts between 2nd millennium (Late Bronze Age) Greece and the north, others have examined in detail the evidence for the links between the Urnfield culture and Greece during the 10th, 9th and 8th centuries. For Greece, this is an utterly different period from the preceding one; the evidence for foreign contacts suddenly becomes scarce and that for military disasters is virtually non-existent. Yet some scholars have reached very similar conclusions, involving the transmission of objects and of the people who carried them from Central Europe into Greece, for this period as for the preceding Late Bronze Age. Such arguments have a recent exponent in Professor W. Kimmig, whose paper Seevölkerbewegung und Urnenfelderkultur ranges over the whole period from about 1200 to 700. His list of objects and practices in this period, which he considers to have been donated by the Danube-Balkan peoples to the Mediterranean world, is comprehensive indeed: it would include bronze shields and body armour, the equipment of Goliath, the knobbed ware of Troy VII B, the practice of cremation in the Iron Age, the ritual spoliation of weapons in graves, iron swords, spears, knives, bits, lugged axes, spits, fire-dogs, bronze personal objects generally, clay idols, the maeander pattern and the swans of Apollo.

scholarly journals Osadnictwo ma wyspie Thira (Santoryn) od neolitu po późną epokę brązu

2018 ◽  
Vol 16 ◽  
pp. 155-199
Author(s):  
Mariusz Kufel
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Thick Layer ◽  
Late Bronze Age ◽  
History Of ◽  
Santorini Volcano ◽  
The Town ◽  
Entire Island

This article presents a history of the Thera Island occupation in the Neolithic and Bronze Age. Altogether, 13 settlements and 2 cemeteries have been recorded from this period. The island was inhabited until the Late Bronze Age. The most significant centre on the island was surely the town of Akrotiri. At the beginning of the Late Bronze Age, a large eruption of the Santorini volcano took place which ceased the occupation and covered the almost entire island with a thick layer of pumice.

Preliminary Report on Archaeological Excavations in Sophtades, Cyprus: Pre-Byzantine Pottery

2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 328-336
Author(s):  
Vakhtang Licheli ◽  
Giorgi Gagoshidze ◽  
Merab Kasradze
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Preliminary Report ◽  
Roman Period ◽  
Late Bronze Age ◽  
Cultural Layers ◽  
The Village ◽  
Archaeological Excavations

Abstract The article is devoted to the materials found during the excavations of St. George Church located in the southern part of Cyprus, near the village of Softades. In the cultural layers inside of this church, pottery belonging to the Roman period, Iron Age and Late Bronze Age has been discovered. It is discussed in this article.

The Philistines

2020 ◽  
pp. 146-169
Author(s):  
Brian R. Doak
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Literary Culture ◽  
Early Experience ◽  
Religious Practice ◽  
Late Bronze Age ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Mediterranean World ◽  
Archaeological Work ◽  
New Nation ◽  
David And Goliath

In a political and military sense, none of Israel’s neighbors loom as large in the biblical imagination as the Philistines. Indeed, the Bible depicts the Philistines as inextricably involved with Israel’s early experience with the monarchy, threatening the existence of the new nation. Throughout 1 Samuel—most famously in the story of David and Goliath—the Philistines antagonize Israel. Decades of archaeological research have given us an independent view of the Philistines—as a cultured people who were a contingent of the so-called Sea Peoples who migrated east after the collapse of the Late Bronze Age political system in the Mediterranean world. Though no substantial native Philistine literary culture or even a script to speak of survives, archaeological work at sites along the coastal plain has presented rich examples of a distinctive Philistine pottery tradition, iconography, and glimpses into their religious practice.

Travellers' tales and science-based archaeology: ex oriente lux revisited

Antiquity ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 89 (343) ◽  
pp. 219-220 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Bernard Knapp
Keyword(s):  
Copper Oxide ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Cultural Change ◽  
Lead Isotope ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Late Bronze Age ◽  
Cultural Contact ◽  
Mediterranean World ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
At Will

Ling and Stos-Gale (above, p. 206) end their study on a safe, if rather vague, note: “[w]e could, perhaps, consider the maritime-themed rock art depictions [of ships and copper oxide ingots] as records of travellers’ tales, where representations of reality mingle with myths, magic and sailors' stories”. Yes, perhaps we could, since at least two of the ingot depictions (Kville 156:1 at Torsbo, Norrköping) look strikingly similar—as the authors note—to the ‘pillow ingots’ (Kissenbarren) known from the Mediterranean world. Or, perhaps, we could remain more cautious before even broaching the idea of interconnectedness between Late Bronze Age Scandinavia and the eastern Mediterranean. Such a suggestion requires a lot more faith in the basic arguments of Kristiansen and Larsson (2005)—namely, that Europe and the Mediterranean formed a massive, open network through which warrior elites and others travelled at will—than I am able to muster. For Kristiansen and Larsson, cultural contact and cultural change ultimately still flow ex oriente—thus, they return whence Childe began. Yet whereas their work is an attempt at synthesis, not analysis, Ling and Stos-Gale have a stab at analysis, of the lead isotope variety. The question is how well they succeed.

scholarly journals Craniological Materials of the Late Bronze Age from the Berezovsky V Kurgan Cemetery in the Trans Urals

2020 ◽  
pp. 254-267
Author(s):  
Аleksey Nechvaloda
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Young Woman ◽  
Burial Mound ◽  
Late Bronze Age ◽  
Facial Skeleton ◽  
Burial Site ◽  
Work Activity ◽  
Severe Wear ◽  
Full Face ◽  
Archaeological Excavations

This paper is dedicated to discussion of craniological materials obtained from Berezovsky 5 burial mound in the southern Trans-Urals during archaeological excavations in 1994. The mound necropolis dates back to the Late Bronze Age (14th to 13th сс. BC) and relates to the Kozhumberdy stage in the Alakul development line of the Andronovo cultural community. Three researched skulls, two of them male and one female, originate from mound 6 of this burial site. The dental system of a young woman has undergone severe wear as a result of work activity. The craniological research of the female skull using Heincke formula made it possible to tentatively judge about its morphological affinity to skulls from the Laimberdy burial site and a combined skull set of the Akakul culture from the Trans-Urals. Basing on the female skull we have performed a graphic reconstruction of her appearance full face. The female skull shows some Mongoloid traits. Two male skulls failed to preserve their facial skeletons, except for braincases. The indicators of facial skeleton flattening at the orbital level can also testify to the presence of the Mongoloid component in their craniological type.

scholarly journals La prima urbanizzazione in Turkmenistan: coesistenza tra nomadi e sedentari nel delta interno del fiume Murghab

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roberto Arciero ◽  
Luca Forni
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Alluvial Fan ◽  
Late Bronze Age ◽  
Preliminary Results ◽  
Mobile Pastoralists ◽  
Harsh Climate ◽  
The Bronze Age ◽  
Desert Landscape ◽  
Archaeological Excavations

Modern Turkmenistan is mainly constituted by a desert landscape, yet despite its harsh climate, cultures have been able to construct networks of water channels since the Bronze Age. This has resulted in a man-made landscape that integrates towns and villages. Extensive surveys and recent archaeological excavations have highlighted that between 2400 and 2100 BC (Namazga V period), the region of the Murghab alluvial fan was characterised by the development of complex urban societies. However, starting from the Late Bronze Age, a new group of mobile pastoralists appeared in the Murghab region and settled along the edges of the sedentary sites. Although their presence is well-attested both by survey and excavation data, their degree of interaction with the sedentary farmers is still debated. In modern Turkmenistan, semi-mobile shepherds continue to drive their cattle across the Murghab, using mobile camps for different months. This paper presents the preliminary results of the excavation of the sedentary site of Togolok 1, as well as the first ethnographic study of the mobile communities of the Murghab region.

scholarly journals ATLANTIS IN SPAIN II

2017 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 108
Author(s):  
S.P. Papamarinopoulos
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Late Bronze Age ◽  
Greek Language ◽  
East Mediterranean ◽  
The Past ◽  
North East ◽  
The North ◽  
12Th Century ◽  
Archaeological Excavations

Plato, who lived in the 4th century B.C., wrote the dialogue Timaeos and Critias when he was 52 years old. In this he describes a catastrophe in Athens from an earthquake in the presence of excessive rain. He also describes several details, not visible in his century, in the Acropolis of Athens. These details are a spring and architectural details of buildings in which the warriors used to live. In Critias he mentions that the destruction of the spring was caused by an earthquake. The time of the catastrophe of Atlantis was not defined by him but it is implied that it occurred after the assault of the Atlantes in the Mediterranean. Archaeological excavations confirmed the existence of the spring which was about 25 m deep with respect to the present day walking level. Archaeologically dated ceramics, found at its bottom, denote the last function of the spring was in very early 12th century B.C. Plato describes the warriors’ settlements which were found outside of the fortification wall in the North East of the Acropolis. The philosopher, who was not a historian, describes a general catastrophe in Greece from which the Greek language survived till his century. Archaeological studies have offered a variety of tablets of Linear B writings which turn out to be the non-alphabetic type of writing of the Greeks up to the 12th century B.C. before the dark ages commence. Modern geoarchaeological and palaeoseismological studies prove that seismic storms occurred in the East Mediterranean between 1225 and 1175 B.C. The result of a fifty-year period of earthquakes was the catastrophe of many late Bronze Age palaces or settlements. For some analysts both Athens and Atlantis presented in Timaeos and Critias are imaginary entities. They maintained that the imaginary conflict between Athens and Atlantis served Plato to produce the first world’s “science fiction” and gave the Athenians an anti-imperialistic lesson through his fabricated myth. However, a part of this “science fiction”, Athens of Critias, is proved a reality of the 12th century B.C., described only by Plato and not by historians, such as Herodotus, Thucydides and others. Analysts of the past have mixed Plato’s fabricated Athens presented in his dialogue Republic with the non-fabricated Athens of his dialogue Critias. This serious error has deflected researchers from their target to interpret Plato’s text efficiently.

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