Amazing new finds and treasures have been unearthed during excavation work that took place at Akrotiri village on Santorini island, including a 3,600-year-old marble figurine of a woman.
The archaeological team, headed by Professor Doumas Archaeologists also found two small marble jars, a marble vial and an alabaster vase inside rectangular clay chests within an ancient settlement.
They said the finds shed new light on the beliefs of the Theran society – a mysterious group that scientists know little about as they had no written language.
The discovery was made by experts at the Greek culture ministry in the prehistoric village of Akrotiri, also referred to as the ‘Minoan Pompeii’.
According to a culture ministry announcement, the finds were made under rubble inside a large and probably public building near where the golden ibex now on display at the Museum of Prehistoric Thira was also found in a clay chest beside a pile of animal horns.
“Following the gradual revealing and cleaning of the small chest in the northwest corner of the space, a marble protocycladic female figure was found placed diagonally along the bottom of the vessel. From the group of chests in the southeast corner of the space, three were uncovered, of which the two smallest were filled with egg-shaped masses of clay while the largest contained two small marble protocycladic collared jars, placed upside down, a marble vial and an alabaster vase,” the announcement said.
According to archaeologists, the new finds include a number of different marble artifacts that were likely used for religious or other symbolic rituals, archaeologists said.
They shed fresh light on the prehistoric Theran society, which scientists believe was killed off during Santorini’s 16th Century BC eruption.
‘They provide a stimulus for a new interpretive drive on fundamental questions about the ideology and possibly the religion of prehistoric Aegean society.’
Akrotiri is a spectacular find for researchers because much of the settlement became preserved for the ages by solidified volcanic ash.
Jesus tomb restored by Greek scientists, reopens in Jerusalem
