THERASIA II - Historicizing Prehistory: The historical and epistemological context of the archaeological discovery on Therasia in 1866

Athens, 2019. Papers in Greek, English, French, German. Soft cover, 27 cm, 464 pp., ill.; net weight 1100 gr. ISBN: 978-960-98261-5-0.


In January 1866, an important event shook the lives of the inhabitants of Santorini as well as of the entire South Aegean and Crete all while attracting considerable scientific and political interest. In the large enclosed gulf between Thera and Therasia, a series of eruptions, the emergence of new islands and the submersion of others, heralded the volcanic phenomena that were to last until October 1870. It was in this context that a prehistoric building was unexpectedly discovered on Therasia in the course of mining works carried out to support the opening of the Suez Canal. The dwelling was the first of its kind in Greece, well ahead of Troy, Knossos and Mycenae. Thanks to significant developments in the new sciences (geology, biology, paleontology) accompanied by theoretical elaborations and universalist historical approaches in the nascent fields of archaeology, sociology and anthropology, the eruption became a landmark in volcanology. But not its concomitant prehistoric find. In archaeology, the second half of the 19th century is also a formative period for a discipline obsessed by Classical Greece and Rome and the early pre-historians methodologically often follow the geosciences, mainly with Palaeolithic research in France and Spain. This volume explores the manifold and unexpected aspects of the interaction between political, natural and scientific developments brought about by the new data from the Gulf of Thera in the slow recognition of what "Greece" was "before legend and before history"...