This week we took our final weekend trip to Santorini and Crete. This was one of the most exciting weekend trips for me because we got to see the site of Akrotiti. Ι have been looking forward to getting to see this sight since I heard about the trip because of the incredible state of preservation that it is in. It has been (perhaps unfairly) referred to as the “Greek Pompeii” in a few of my classes and, while the comparison is fair, reducing this sight to a version of Pompeii undersells it. One of the most exciting things to me was seeing the multiple storied buildings. These almost never preserve from the ancient world, especially as old as Akrotiri is, and so to see not only evidence of them but so many of the stories are still standing in the buildings in Akrotiti. This included three story buildings which I rarely see on the building plans for Pompeii. I know conceptually that they likely existed in the insulae and such, but many of the building plans are of villas that are displayed with only two stories and seeing so many at least three story buildings from so much longer ago makes me wonder how many other ancient buildings had more stories that we do not have complete evidence for. Knossos is a different site but because of the heavy reconstructions present there I was also able to see how much light was let into these buildings through the techniques. Since most of what I see if floor plans or ruins it is hard to conceptualize just how much light is actually in the rooms and how much is visible, but the reconstructions there helped to show how much light could actually get in which I could then apply to Akrotiti even though we were not able to wander the ruins there in the same way.
Akrotiti, like Pompeii, is also home to some of the most beautiful and well known frescos from the ancient world. There unique method of preservation allows the colors and structure of the fresco to survive much better than typically. Two of these frescos stood out to me in particular when we saw them in the museum.
The first was one that to me looked as though it depicted a woman putting makeup on. I don’t believe it was labelled as such, but the reddish color on the dish that she was holding appeared to perfectly match the reddish color on her lips which did not seem to have their lipstick fully applied. This interpretation could be off in any number of ways including the fading of pigments through time so that they appear now to be the same even if they were not initially designed to, the loss of parts of the fresco such that it was clear she was doing everything or that her makeup was perfectly applied, or other context that the fresco was in lending it to a different interpretation. Regardless, it was a beautiful fresco that to me portrayed a woman putting makeup on and it would be interesting to see how this same posture may have been interpreted differently in antiquity.
The second was a fresco that depicted a woman who was doing something I wasn’t sure about, but she was surrounded and covered by red dots that on further inspection appeared to be red polka dots on a fabric. This fabric seemed to be a sheer orange fabric that was being used as a sheer veil over her head and body. This to me seemed not only to be a display of wealth, given the apparent quality and quantity of the fabric, but it also gave me a lot of space to think about the fabrics that they had and how they were using them. It implies to me that they had the technology to make sheer fabric or at least had access through trade routes to get sheer fabric, but that somebody at the time in the relative area was able to make sheer fabric. On top of that it is decorated fabric, but due to it being a painting and an old reconstructed one at that it was not possible to tell how they were doing this.
The two methods that are most obvious are that it was either woven in and thus a part of the fabric or that it was added on after the fabric was constructed. Both would be labor intensive, but in different ways. The dots did not appear to be sheer like the rest of the fabric, but that could just be the painting, and so the thread and weaving style might have to drastically change in order to create the polka dots while weaving. If they were added after the construction of the fabric they could be either embroidered on and thus very textural or painted on, and potentially stiffen the fabric in those spots and require an entirely different medium and skill for the construction. However the fabric was constructed it, to me, seemed like a very expensive article of clothing and potentially a prestige piece that makes me wonder if they were constructing it on the island (and potentially exporting it) or importing it and also how common this type of fabric was thought the Aegean at this time and throughout ancient history.