Ok, this may be my most geeky blogpost of all, my long dreams of archaeology showing clear.  After Michelle and I went to Akrotiri, and we met the other tour groups, most dispersed to the village of Oia (wish someone would blog-picture that for us!), but I wandered off by myself, and eventually got to this Museum of Prehistoric Thira--which is where many of the artifacts from Akrotiri are located.  [But check this out--when I googled 'Santorini museum,' I got a whole range of places I didn't even suspect were there.  Need a week on this island sometime.]

So, I took way too many pictures here, half of them with that yellow museum-case light.  Several kinds of things here--a few bronze implements (this was the Bronze Age, after all), many pieces of pottery, and most astonding, the recovered wall frescos, which have survived and retained their color after being buried in volcanic ash for 3500 years.  I tried to take notes as I went along taking pictures, but I also had to dodge around a German group and others, so my notes don't tell me much--'Neolithic obsidian, marble fig 7800BCE, jugs 1700BCE, Linear A fragments'--oh, well.  Here's more old vases than most of you will want to see.

Here, an odd little table, recovered from the ash, looking strangely fragile, touching...

then a set of bronze scale plates (I suspect the plexiglass stand and chain are not original...


with a set of weight-measures...

then one of the many curiously-shaped vases...

and an odd human figure...

Here, a larger standing basin, decorated with various fish and dolphins...

Here, one of the wall frescoes, a woman holding out her arm--notice the make-up, the bracelet, the delicate wrist...

lilies in this same set...

and a woman facing the other...

Here a vase decorated with a bull on one side, and fish on the other (though I'm only giving you the bull)...

there, vases inscribed with grain and grapes...


Here, an oddly feminine vase (there were quite a few with this design)...

This vase with something swimming--I'm tempted to say plesiosaur, or a cousin of the critter in Loch Ness, which I belive Patti's son Jeff took of photo of when we were there last year...


A double wine jug--Big Gulp, or a way to keep it cooler?

The spectacular Blue Monkeys wall fresco...

and the only precious metal ornament found so far at Akrotiri, a small gold calf that was in a pit with a collection of various horns, as if an invocation to whatever gods to calm the volcano...

Ok, I'll stop with this museum.  About 4, 5 more blogs [donkey, Akropolis, Delphi, Temple of Poseidon...], and I'll be done.

later, bob