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The Theran eruption and Minoan palatial collapse: new interpretations gained from modelling the maritime network

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Carl Knappett ,
Ray Rivers  and
Tim Evans
Carl Knappett
Affiliation:
Department of Art, University of Toronto, 6036 Sidney Smith Hall, 100 St George St., Toronto, Ontario M5S 3G3, Canada (Email: [email protected])
Ray Rivers
Affiliation:
Department of Physics, Imperial College London, South Kensington Campus, London SW7 2AZ, UK (Email: [email protected]; [email protected])
Tim Evans
Affiliation:
Department of Physics, Imperial College London, South Kensington Campus, London SW7 2AZ, UK (Email: [email protected]; [email protected])
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Extract

What was the effect on Late Minoan civilisation of the catastrophic destruction of Akrotiri on Thera (Santorini) by volcanic eruption? Not much, according to the evidence for continuing prosperity on Crete. But the authors mobilise their ingenious mathematical model (published in Antiquity 82: 1009–1024), this time to show that the effects of removing a major port of call could have impacted after an interval, as increased costs of transport gradually led to ever fewer routes and eventual economic collapse.

Keywords

AegeanMinoanCreteTheraSantoriniAkrotiriBronze Agemaritime communicationsnetwork analysis
Type
Method
Information
Antiquity , Volume 85 , Issue 329 , September 2011 , pp. 1008 - 1023
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 2011

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