The Museum of Prehistoric Thera
houses finds from the excavations at Akrtotiri, conducted under the
auspices of the Archaeological Society at Athens, the earlier
excavations at Potamos, made by members of the German Archaeological
Institute at Athens, and rescue excavations at various other sites on
the island, carried out by the 21st Ephorate of Antiquities for the
Cyclades and Samos, as well as objects discovered fortuitously or
handed over. The exhibition is structured in four units,
referring to: - the history of research at Thera,
- the geology of Thera,
- the island's history from the Late Neolithic to the Late Cycladic I
periond (early 17th century B.C.) and
- the heyday of the city at Akrotiri
(mature Late Cycladic I period, 17th century B.C.).
In the last unit,
in particular, various aspects are presented, such as the plan and
architecture of the city and its organization as an urban centre, the
emergent bureaucratic system, the development of the monumental art of
wall-painting, the rich and diverse pottery repertoire, the elegant
jewellery, the reciprocal influences between vase-painting and
wall-painting, and the city's and the island's complex network of
contacts with the outside word.
The exhibits include fossils of
plants that flourished before the human habitation of Thera and
archaeological objects. Among the earliest pieces are Neolithic
pottery, Early Cycladic marble figurines, Early Cycladic pottery,
including interesting pieces of the transitional phase from Late
Cycladic II to Late Cycladic III period (Kastri group) from the
Christiana islets and Akrotiri (3300-2000 B.C.) -Middle Cycladic
pottery with a series of impressive bird jugs, many of them decorated
with swallows - from Ftellos, Megalochori and Akrotiri (20th-18th
century B.C.), and Early Cycladic metal artefacts from the last two
sites. Noteworthy among the numerous
exhibits from the period when the city at Akrotiri was at its zenith
(17th century B.C.) are the plaster casts of furniture, the household
equipment, the bronze vessels, tools and weapons, the objects that bear
witness to the practice of metalworking, the sealings, seals and Linear
A tablets. Impressive too are the magnificent wall-painting ensembles
(wall-painting of Ladies and Papyri, wall-painting of the Blue Monkeys)
and fragments of others (the "African", Adorant Monkeys, Bird, Floral
motifs). Last, there are numerous and luxurious clay vases including
the remarkable pithos with the bull, vases of stone and of clay
imported from different parts of the Aegean and the Eastern
Mediterranean, and the gold ibex figurine, a remarkable recent find. The exhibition endeavours to sketch
the course of Thera in prehistoric times, through selected finds from
the thousands in the storerooms. This was a dynamic and creative course
which established the city at Akrotiri as one of the most important
Aegean centres during the 18th and 17th centuries B.C.
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