Recording Santorini’s subterranean landscapes: A noninvasive approach to the investigation of cave use strategies in insular environments

Abstract

This paper investigates cave use strategies in insular environments, focusing on a case study from Santorini (Thera) island in Greece. The paper has a two-fold aim to propose and test a methodological framework for noninvasive archaeological evaluation of cave sites and to explore the ways that people, not only on Santorini, but also on similar small islands, have engaged with caves through time. Santorini is famous today as a holiday destination; however, a large part of the island’s historic landscape has disappeared. This is due to the Bronze Age volcanic eruption that covered the majority of the island with a thick layer of tuff and pumice, as well as intensive building and agricultural activity in the second half of the twentieth century, all of which have dramatically transformed the island’s natural environment. Today, our accounts of the island’s prehistory come from the extraordinary preservation of the Akrotiri site, and considerable knowledge gained from other locations, about the role that the island played diachronically in the history of the Aegean. We are, however, still missing valuable information about the relationship between the island’s inhabitants and their environment.

Keywords:

• Archaeological cave survey
• paperless mapping
• Aegean Bronze Age
• Medieval Aegean
• cave archaeology

Acknowledgements

Research of the Santorini cave sites is part of the ongoing Ephoreia of Paleoanthropology and Speleology project to systematically explore, register, and preserve, cave sites in the Cyclades. We would like to thank the Cardiff University Caving Club, Cardiff University Department of Archaeology and Conservation, Akrotiri Excavations, The Society of the Promotion of Studies on Prehistoric Thera, and the Ghar Parau Foundation for their support. The cavers and students, including Dimitris Karoutis, Victoria Alexander, Roxanne Lyons, Kate Evetts, Jack Eastwood, Olja Mladjenović, Holly Brown, Gabriella Amos, and Dr Konstantina Kalogirou assisted with fieldwork. N. Papazarkadas also shared valuable information about research in the classical caves of Ancient Thera. The authors are also grateful to Prof. Emeritus C. Doumas, Dr. Tania Devetzi, Maya Efstathiou, Argyris Mavromatis, Dr Christianne Fernée, and Lefteris Zorzos for their support on the island.