Akrotiri (c. 1600 BC): The Bronze Age Town Buried by Thera

Akrotiri was a prosperous Bronze Age harbour town on the Aegean island of Thera, today Santorini, buried under volcanic ash and pumice by the Minoan eruption around 1600 BC. Because the ash sealed its streets and houses, some standing two or three storeys high, it is often called the “Pompeii of the Aegean”. Its wall paintings, uncovered since 1967, are among the finest surviving works of art from prehistoric Europe.

Background: a town at a crossroads

People lived at Akrotiri from the Late Neolithic period, in the fourth millennium BC. During the Bronze Age the settlement grew into one of the most important towns of the Aegean, thanks to its sheltered harbour on the south coast of Thera and its position on sea routes between Crete, the Cyclades, the Greek mainland and the eastern Mediterranean.

By the 17th century BC the town may have covered around 20 hectares, of which only a small part has been excavated. Its culture was Cycladic, with strong influence from Minoan Crete, about 110 kilometres to the south. Its people used Minoan-style pottery, weights and the Linear A script, and they traded with Crete, the mainland, Cyprus and the Levant.

The town and its houses

The excavated area reveals paved streets and small squares lined with buildings of stone and timber. Archaeologists have given them names such as the West House, the House of the Ladies and Xeste 3, a large building faced with cut stone.

Many houses had two or three storeys, with ground-floor rooms for storage, milling and workshops and upper floors for living and ceremonies. Large windows, wooden staircases and interior walls covered in painted plaster point to a wealthy population. A drainage system ran beneath the streets, linked to clay pipes from upper floors, a sign of careful town planning.

Storerooms held large jars for oil, wine, grain and pulses, and the excavators found beds, tables, baskets and tools. Even the shapes of wooden furniture survive, because ash filled the hollows left when wood decayed; archaeologists pour plaster into these cavities to recover their form.

The frescoes

Akrotiri’s wall paintings were made on lime plaster and survive in remarkable condition. Among the best known is the Spring Fresco, which covers three walls of a room with red lilies growing from volcanic rocks and swallows darting above them. The Boxing Boys shows two children with long locks of hair sparring with gloves, and the Fisherman shows a young man holding strings of fish.

In the West House a long miniature frieze shows a fleet of ships sailing between coastal towns, with people watching from roofs and shores. It is one of the most detailed images of Aegean seafaring to survive. In Xeste 3, paintings of young women gathering saffron crocuses for a seated goddess flanked by a monkey and a griffin suggest that the building had a religious or initiation role.

The paintings tell us about dress, hairstyles, ships, animals and rituals that would otherwise be unknown. They also show how artists on Thera shared a common artistic language with Knossos and other Minoan centres while developing their own style.

Daily life and trade

Finds from the houses give a detailed picture of everyday life. Animal bones, seeds and residues in pots show that the people of Akrotiri ate barley, pulses, olives, figs, fish, shellfish, sheep, goats and pigs, and that they kept bees. Loom weights in many buildings point to weaving on a large scale, and saffron, shown in the Xeste 3 paintings, may have been a valuable product for dyeing or medicine.

Imported objects reveal a wide network of contacts. Pottery came from Crete, the Greek mainland and other Cycladic islands, and some items arrived from Cyprus and the Levant. Lead weights based on the Minoan system and Linear A inscriptions on jars suggest that merchants measured and recorded goods in ways shared across the southern Aegean.

The miniature frieze from the West House, with its ships decorated with banners and animals, may show a festival or the return of a fleet. Whatever its exact meaning, it confirms that seafaring stood at the centre of the town’s wealth and identity.

The end of the town

Before the eruption a strong earthquake damaged Akrotiri. Residents cleared rubble from the streets, stacked building stones and began repairs. Then they left, taking most of their portable valuables with them.

The excavated area has produced no human remains and very few precious objects. One exception is a small gold figurine of an ibex, found in 1999 in a box beneath debris. The volcano then buried the town under pumice and ash during the Minoan eruption of Thera. Where the inhabitants went, and how many survived, is unknown.

Excavation and preservation

In the 1860s, quarrying of pumice on Santorini, much of it for building the Suez Canal, exposed ancient walls. The French geologist Ferdinand Fouqué and other French scholars investigated these remains, and in 1870 French researchers dug near Akrotiri.

Systematic excavations began in 1967 under Spyridon Marinatos for the Archaeological Society at Athens. He chose the site partly to test his theory, published in 1939, that the eruption had destroyed Minoan civilisation. Marinatos died at Akrotiri in October 1974 after a fall at the excavation, and he is buried on the site. Christos Doumas directed the excavations from 1975.

The ruins are protected by a large roof. In September 2005 part of the earlier roof collapsed, killing a visitor and forcing the site to close. A new bioclimatic roof was built, and Akrotiri reopened to the public in 2012. Excavation and conservation continue today, and new finds are still being studied and published.

Myths and facts

Myth: Akrotiri was a Minoan colony. The town was strongly influenced by Crete, but most archaeologists see it as an independent Cycladic community with its own traditions, rather than a settlement founded and ruled by Cretans.

Myth: Akrotiri was a disaster like Pompeii, with victims caught in the ash. Pompeii and Herculaneum preserved hundreds of victims of the AD 79 eruption of Vesuvius. At Akrotiri the inhabitants appear to have left before the eruption began.

Myth: Akrotiri is Atlantis. The town has been linked to Plato’s Atlantis in popular books and documentaries, but there is no evidence for the connection, and most historians regard Atlantis as fiction.

Timeline

• c. 4500–3500 BC: First settlement at Akrotiri in the Late Neolithic.
• c. 2000–1700 BC: Akrotiri grows into a major Aegean harbour town.
• c. 1650–1600 BC: An earthquake damages the town; residents begin repairs, then leave.
• c. 1600 BC (debated): The Minoan eruption buries Akrotiri under ash and pumice.
• 1860s–1870: Pumice quarrying and French investigations reveal ancient walls.
• 1967: Spyridon Marinatos begins systematic excavations.
• 1974, October: Marinatos dies at the site; Christos Doumas takes over in 1975.
• 2005, September: Part of the protective roof collapses; the site closes.
• 2012: Akrotiri reopens under a new roof.

Why it matters

Akrotiri preserves a Bronze Age Aegean town almost as its people left it, with streets, houses, furniture and painted rooms that rarely survive elsewhere. It offers a vivid picture of daily life, art and religion in the age of the Minoans and of a community that seems to have escaped one of history’s greatest eruptions.