Archaeology Magazine - April 1971 - 39

A vessel with leaping dolphins from the Akrotiri excavations .

the building style at Tylissos, according to Page,
but lean and long, eighty meters at least, makes
it certain that Marinatos has come down in one
of the most noble and beautiful areas of the buried city, and his flair and success will surely continue over the years.
Page returns to the destruction and/or desolation of Minoan Crete. One title is used outside
the book, the other inside. Rightly dismissing the
dates obtained by Carbon- 14 at the University of
Pennsylvania, which would fix the death of trees
on Thera at 1800 b.c., and the mythical volcanic
"bombs" at Zakro, which are actually fused construction material from a local fire, Page turns to
other problems concerning the Cretan destructions which have not been emphasized recently.
The extent of fires of Cretan sites suggests that
earthquake was the immediate cause, as Evans
and his colleagues always maintained. Towns
were in ruins before any hypothetical tsunamis
(sea floods) arrived. They were then abandoned
because of the ash fall which made the land difficult to use for grazing, although certain crops
flourish in ash. Many animals and people will
have choked or been subject to severe accidents.
The recent horrible cyclone in the Bay of Bengal
which killed so much human and animal life by
combined action of air and water, is a reminder
that such natural factors, often underestimated
in history (except by Rhys Carpenter among
archaeologists), the environment turned vicious,
have effects which scholars spend years explaining in other, more humanly centered terms. A
loss of proper drinking water and shelter as side
effects seems to kill more than the original blow.

One point which deserves more attention, however, is that Crete went on in spite of earthquake
and partial foreign occupation, and was rich and
densely populated in the fourteenth and thirteenth
centuries b.c.- Thera's eruption did not, in fact,
mean total destruction or desolation.
Among the effects, fifty years after the abandonment of Akrotiri, Professor Page rightly, I
think, rejects the terrific floodwave, and opts for
a violent earthquake (also recently experienced
in Turkey, Iran, Sicily and Peru) with accompanying fire, and explores the possibility of demolition by shock waves, aerial vibrations, already
considered by J. V. Luce in The End of Atlantis
(London 1969) . These would hit upper mudbrick
walls hard, and account for the rebuilding programs at Knossos and other centers with plentiful
labor. It is doubtful that more excavation, or
perusal of old notebooks, will ever put these matters on a solid basis; there is range enough of
speculation to delight the most hardened romantic.
In conclusion, one should draw attention to the
good quality of the color illustrations and the useful text figures, but wish that the black and white
illustrations had not been so grimy and out of
focus. This is not the author's fault; he lost his
films and was given donations by eminent colleagues at the congress- but the book is below
par in illustrative material. It is a small loss, in
comparison to the stimulation and accuracy of
the text. Until the final publication of the Thera
excavations by Professor Marinatos, this will be
a most useful and, of course, literate report which
states the problem fairly and draws conclusions
which are rational and intelligent.
135

Archaeology Magazine - April 1971

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Archaeology Magazine - April 1971