A Test of Time: The Volcano of Thera and the Chronology and History of the Aegean and East Mediterranean in the Mid Second Millennium

Funded by the European Union, the Populus project is a major study of long-term change in Mediterranean Europe involving a multidisciplinary team of archaeologists, palaeoscientists and historians. Each volume focuses on a different methodological or theoretical aspect of Mediterranean archaeology.The chronology and dating of the great Minoan eruption of the Thera (Santorini) volcano is still the basis for our understanding of the Bronze Age world, and yet since 1939 this date has been the focus of major controversy, with different groups of archaeologists proposing dates about a century apart. The implications of any redating are huge: did the New Palace civilization of Crete and the Shaft Grave culture of southern Greece, for example, communicate with the Middle Bronze Age Levantine/Canaanite world, or the Late Bronze Age world of the Egyptian 18th Dynasty? The two options would indicate completely different developmental trajectories. This book seeks a resolution of the Thera date, and related archaeological chronologies, based on a critical review of all current archaeological and scientific data. A new 'early' chronology for the Aegean c.1700-1400 BC is proposed.