FRIEDRICH, W. L. 2000. Fire in the Sea. The Santorini Volcano: Natural History and the Legend of Atlantis. Translated by A. R. McBirney. xiv+258 pp. Cambridge University Press. Price 19.95, US $34.95 (hard covers). ISBN 0 521 65290 1

Santorini is one of the best known caldera volcanoes in the World. Its fame comes from the spectacular geology of the caldera wall and the catastrophic large magnitude explosive eruption of the late Bronze Age which had major effects on eastern Mediterranean civilisation of the time. The ancient Minoan town of Akrotiri is preserved beneath many metres of pumice and ash from the eruption, with some of the most wonderful frescoes of the ancient world. Santorini has thus fascinated scientists and scholars for well over a century, ever since the pioneering studies of the French scientist Fouqué, who published his seminal study of Santorini in 1879. Santorini has been a major stimulus for research in volcanology, archaeology and art history. There is at least a plausible case for linking Santorini with the legend of Atlantis and so the island and its story have received wide interest from the public. Walter Friedrich, an eminent Earth scientist from Aarhus University, Denmark, had made important contributions to understanding the geology of Santorini, and has now produced a very attractive book on the island. Fire in the Sea deals with all major aspects of the history of Santorini from the perspective of science and scholarship. The book includes a great deal of geology with an account of the stratigraphy, palaeontology, structural geology, and volcanology of the island. The great Bronze Age explosive eruption figures prominently in the book. However, this is much more than a geology book, because there are chapters on the archaeology and history of Santorini, and an account of the reasons why the great eruption might be linked to the legend of Atlantis. There are also chapters on the geography and flora of the present-day island. The book is beautifully produced and illustrated with outstanding colour diagrams and photographs, and is also well written, making it a very pleasing book to read and own. The book seems to be mostly pitched at the intelligent layman, so there is a strong focus on education of basic scientific principles. For example, one chapter explains plate tectonics using the Aegean area to illustrate the main concepts, and there are detailed and careful explanations of radiocarbon dating. The scientific and archaeological explanations are often given in insets, so that the main narrative is not interrupted. There are, however, several quite technical chapters, in particular those dealing with the detailed geological history and palaeontology of Santorini. These chapters read more like scientific papers with technical data, quite comprehensive references and discussions. I suspect that the non-geologist will find these parts of the book quite heavy-going. Where the book will be particularly useful will be to cross disciplines. Archaeologists will find the introduction and information on the geology very helpful, just as geologists will be educated on archaeological and historical issues. By and large the book will be accessible to any reader interested in science, natural history and archaeology. I have some criticisms of some of the technical content of the book, which would undoubtedly have benefited from peer-review. The stratigraphic accounts are not always either clear or indeed accurate. The stratigraphy is complicated by quite a number of apparent inconsistencies in geochronology, mostly related to the different techniques used to date the major lava and pyroclastic horizons, including palaeontology, fission track, K–Ar, 39Ar/40Ar, radiocarbon methods, and correlations with the marine sediment record in the Aegean. The discussion of these problems either seems to accept inconsistent results at face value, or favours radiocarbon ages over other information. I think most geochronologists would take a very different view that 39Ar/40Ar ages of young volcanic rocks are much better and more believable than radiocarbon ages of old materials with apparent ages more than 30 000 years. Similarly some of the reconstructions of Santorini in different periods are questionable, and it does not appear that other published research has been fully considered. I found the account of the Minoan eruption itself uneven in quality and accuracy. For example, the account does not recognize four phases to the eruption, which is well established. However, these are detailed matters that will be of interest to the specialists, but do not really detract from the value of the book to a wider audience. Scientifically the most valuable contribution of the book is in summarizing the important researches of Walter Friedrich himself. As a palaeontologist he provides a great deal of valuable information on the fossils of the island, and also on reconstructing past environments. Undoubtedly the highlight of his work is the realization of the significance of clasts of stromatolite in the deposits of the Minoan eruption. Although these clasts had long been recognized as very young ‘late Quaternary’ materials it was Friedrich and his student, Ulrike Erikssen, who realized that they implied that a substantial part of the Santorini caldera already existed prior to the Minoan eruption. The stromatolite clasts were dated in the 13 000 to 18 000 year range and, together with the associated snails, were shown to be from a shallow marine lagoonal environment. This northern caldera was formed in the 21 000 year explosive eruption. Previous to this research Santorini had been envisaged as a single huge volcano with the caldera being entirely formed in the Minoan eruption. Druitt & Francaviglia found further evidence from remnants of Minoan deposits on the northern caldera wall that these walls existed prior to the great eruption. However, it was the stromalite studies by Friedrich and Erikssen that provided the key breakthrough. I disagree with Friedrich’s proposed reconstruction, however, preferring the reconstruction of Druitt & Francaviglia, which confines the preMinoan caldera to the northern basin, and postulates a much larger volcanic island in this depression prior to the eruption. Fire in the Sea coincides with the recent publication of two other major scientific books on Santorini. First, Alex McBirney has translated from French and re-published the original book of Ferdinand Fouqué of 1879 Santorini et ses eruptions. This is a masterpiece of nineteenth century science. He recognized the true nature of calderas as collapse structures, and the existence of Bronze Age settlements of a sophisticated civilization destroyed by a major explosive eruption were first recognized. Second, a Memoir of the Geol. Mag. 137 (5), 2000, pp. 593–598. Printed in the United Kingdom © 2000 Cambridge University Press 593