Thera and its Prehistoric Ruins. H5 to ask whether the ruins in question may not be explained away differently ; as tombs, for example, scooped out of the base of the tufaceous stratum, where the stone was laid bare and cut into vertical beds by the last convulsion ? We need not go out of Thera for specimens of tombs so situated, but which date from the Hellenic period. For arguments sake we will suppose that we are not confronted by subterraneous chambers, but real houses erected in the open ; even so may not the tufa which covers them have been rehandled, or be due to seismic and other disturbances which would have produced a sudden sinking of the mass and buried the dwellings built at the foot of the escarp ? This has Fig. 29. — Prehistoric house at Therasia. actually happened to modern houses situated near the railway station of Phira, now lying half buried and fated to disappear altogether. These and similar objections have been completely refuted by excavations commenced in 1866, at the foot of the rocky ridge to the south of Therasia, by two native gentlemen, Alafousos and Nomicos, and terminated in the following year by MM. von Hahn and Fouqu^. The building uncovered by these excavations consists of six chambers of varying size (Fig. 29) ; the largest (a), to the south, is six metres long and five broad, with a recess (b) two metres fifty centimetres at the side. A cross-wall parts it from the rest of the building. Over this wall, from west to east, are two VOL. I. L
