Subject: Re: Thera
From:    Jon van Leuven 
Date:    Thu, 23 Oct 2003 16:04:11 +0200
To:      AEGEANET 

There are several things I still don't understand about this Thera business, so help would be appreciated:

1. Just how "many archaeologists" do think now that the eruption had any important and permanent "death blow" impact on "Minoan civilization", or any other Aegean culture, apart from the obvious effect on some parts thereof such as Thera itself? Are recent findings really shifting any weight of opinion?

2. While the answer may depend on the indirectness of the impact in question, at what point does the indirectness make the impact unverifiable? A strong claim like "Thera buried Crete" is risky; a moderate claim like "Thera disturbed trade which ruined Crete" is hypothetical; a weak claim like "Thera caused problems with refugees, rulers, or religion and thus with victuals, values or virgins and hence everything gradually went to hell" is so speculative it doesn't say much about Thera anyway.

3. What can Aegean archaeologists do to ensure that old facts aren't blurred by grand theories based on new facts? E.g. the Times sounds as if "Dr. Ryan" thinks the Minoans never traded with the 18th Dynasty.

4. Do we really know enough about all the ways in which volcanoes can erupt, to exclude the possibility that Thera erupted in a way much less harmful than its nominal power suggests? Comparisons with e.g. Krakatoa and Tambora are superficial otherwise. E.g. why couldn't Thera have spewed so straight upward, and collapsed so slowly, that it had only very local and very distant effects?

5. Why is the eruption assumed to have had purely negative implications for religion or other ideology? A "revolt of nature" sounds bad for a picnic, but Aegean peoples were not superstitious savages. They might even have viewed the eruption as an epiphany that coughed fresh life into cults which were already corrupt. Could Thera have simply anticipated Bob Dylan - "strike another match, let's start anew"?

Jon van Leuven

Subject: Re: Thera
From:    Jon van Leuven 
Date:    Tue, 28 Oct 2003 23:46:37 +0100
To:      AEGEANET 

I'm a bit surprised at the low ratio of correct information to crude speculation in discussing Thera here. Moreover I still await significant new findings or theories. Most things mentioned so far were published in some form by archaeologists and others 20 to 30+ years ago, when the Atlantis craze flourished with authors like Luce and Page, and when dozens of other explanations for the Minoan decline were in circulation. All in vain! Must each generation "discover" its own inconclusive eruption? Beware a theatre of the up-stirred, whether on public TV or professional networks.

The remarks on the Marine Style are a minor example - countless attempts to interpret this style ideologically have been made, some have argued that it isn't even a style, others that Akrotiri itself has proof that the style arose before the eruption and therefore can't be attributed to the eruption, etc. The so-called LM IB destruction horizon is a major example - such simplistic simultaneity was implausible to chronology gurus like Popham already by the late 70s.

The mention of "seaborne pumice" may seem convincing but, apart from a need to explain occasional offerings, it's debatable - e.g. at Amnisos. In August 1977 I was camping on a hilltop ca 2 km inland. Just as my dog and I were cooking breakfast, a helicopter that was spraying the olive trees flew overhead and, apparently for amusement, dumped a dose of chemical liquid and gray pebbles on us. The latter didn't seem to be dog food or fertilizer, but we forgot about them and ran down to the sea for a wash. At the time I was more interested in the Greek use of agricultural carcinogens than in the fantasy of Thera's tsunami sweeping away the villa on the shore. Still, pumice has had diverse uses through the ages, and if it was being e.g. strewn on farmland it proves nothing about Thera.

• (A) It isn't true that the knife marks were "only at joints" - e.g. "an eye orbit fragment with a knife cut mark" was reported (AR 1981-2, 52). This might suggest eyes were eaten, but eyes are no worse than the snails, which at least the modern Cretans gladly eat live and dripping.
• (B) However, there's also a contradiction between the statements by Weingarten and Warren about the locations of cut-marks (only at joints vs. often away from bone-ends).
• (C) The find-place doesn't confirm the sacrifice theory, e.g. because the reports show that most if not all of this material came from a collapsed upper floor, about which nothing can be inferred except that it held a cult area.
• (D) The sacrifice and burial theories are not mutually exclusive, because the intention might have been to give sacrificial remains a ritual burial. Burials in or near cult areas were not unusual in Crete and elsewhere in the prehistoric Aegean. Neither, of course, does "the removal of flesh" exclude burial, in view of later Greek customs.
• (E) The snails could show that the bones had already been buried and were disinterred along with these animals which had been feeding on them, perhaps for re-burial elsewhere. I assume these were land snails; if they had anything to do with the sea, they could still be related to burial symbolically, inasmuch as the sea was.
• (F) All of which leads me to wonder if the cut-marks themselves were just damage to buried bones - made e.g. by a toothed plough running over old graves in a field. Maybe the field was so full of volcanic ash that the bones couldn't be seen!
• (G) At any rate, this whole find has been made far too much of, in my opinion - it is really not the Rosetta Bone of Minoan archaeology or religion.

But what I do look forward to is a good reason why Mycenaeans would have wanted to "conquer" a Crete that was ruined by Thera or civil war etc., as if they were investing in junk bonds. The assumed "manner of their coming" should at least be consistent with one's views on the destructions (besides the converse influence Colin notes).

Jon van Leuven

Subject:  Re: Thera
From:     "Floyd W. McCoy" 
Date:     Tue, 28 Oct 2003 17:50:34 -1000
To:       jon.vanleuven@swipnet.se, AEGEANET 

At last some time for additional comments... concerning item #4 below and some other comments appearing on aegeanet:

There is ample evidence that the Thera eruption both "spewed upwards" and produced powerful lateral blasts. We have no choice but to make comparisons to Krakatau and Tambora and other historic eruptions, and it is from such comparisons that we estimate a four-day duration for the eruption. Highly explosive eruptions do it quickly - think Mt. St. Helens, for example. Caldera collapse also happened quickly, we think. Distant effects from the eruption are well documented, and it is looking like some evidence is appearing for widespread climate change, as well.

The LBA Thera eruption occured in four distinct, major phases, following a brief precursor ash eruption. Each of these major phases followed each other with no hiatus between them. However, there were some weeks or months (certainly not a year) between the precursor eruption and the start of the first major phase. The famous "time-gap" simply did not exist.

Mention was made that a cm, or so, of silica-rich ash would kill plants. Not so, unless it was extremely hot upon deposition. On Crete, which was the point of the comment, I presume, deposition of ash was from air-fall mechanisms from the passing plume. Thus it was not hot. What kills plants (and people) is fluorine adsorbed on the ash then washed off by rain (e.g., 1784 eruption of Laki in Iceland). Up to 1 meter of ash actually enriches the soil especially for tree crops (grasses would have a tough time of it unless the ash were eroded or mixed into the soil quickly), as was found after the Mt. St. Helens eruption in 1980. Estimates for ash thicknesses on Crete range from a dusting on western Crete (there is new data here that I am waiting on) to perhaps 10-12 cm on eastern Crete (found at Mochlos and Palaikastro archaeological sites). That kind of thickness did little damage, but more likely enriched soils. A group of us are looking for ash (among other things) in cores taken from Lake Kournas.

As noted in my other message on aegeanet, it is my opinion that the Cycladians (and the Minoans) had no idea what an active volcano was, nor that it could produce volcanic eruptions.

Floyd McCoy

-- 
Dr. Floyd W. McCoy
Assoc. Prof. in Geology and Oceanography
Co-chair - Faculty Senate
Univ. of Hawaii - Windward
Kaneohe, HI 96744
also: Graduate Faculty, Dept. Geology & Geophysics; UH-Manoa, Honolulu, HI
      Senior Researcher, Assoc. Scientists at Woods Hole; Woods Hole, MA