Santorini celebrates book featuring its ancient past

Source: ekathimerini



Photo: Iris Tzachili’s new book on the history of excavations on the island of Santorini will be launched tomorrow evening in Oia.

HELBI

The book “The Beginnings of the Prehistoric Aegean: Excavations on Thera and Therasia in the 19th Century” by archeologist Iris Tzachili is to be launched by the Community of Oia on Santorini tomorrow afternoon. The book launch will be held against a backdrop of the famous Oia sunset, at the Aghios Georgios Festival House in Oia with a galaxy of speakers headed by Professor Christos Doumas, director of excavations at Akrotiri, Thera, since 1975; Claire Palyvou, an associate professor of architecture at Thessaloniki University, and, naturally, the author, who is an associate professor of history and archeology at Crete University. The coordinator is Manolis Lignos, an author and the publisher of the Theran News. The publication was subsidized by Kathimerini SA and the launch is being organized by the Oia Community Development Corporation. On Sunday, September 24, Santorini will be at its best, with Oia’s whitewashed houses spilling down the rocky slope facing the caldera. The tourist hordes have thinned; the popular island is slipping back into the quiet season in its authentic, pure Aegean beauty. This weekend was chosen by the Oia community and its president Dimitris Halaris for the presentation of a book that honors archaeological research and its pioneers, a book that is a scientific study of the early history of archaeology in Thera’s network of islands that began in the 19th century. The book is a collection of information about this research, aimed at presenting a picture of Theran society during the Bronze Age. The link with the past and the search through reports left by past researchers was undertaken by Tzachili at the urging of Professor Doumas, who has written the preface to the book, in which he congratulates the author and expresses his thanks. Doumas also notes the vote of thanks that the archaeology community owes to the Therans, as well as to Aristides and Themistocles Alafouzos. This book, accessible not only to the archaeologist, researcher and scholar but to the layperson with an interest in the history of archaeological research in Thera and Therasia as well, fills once and for all what was a gap in the archaeology of the Aegean.