Spyridon Marinatos
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Spyridon Nikolaou Marinatos (November 4, 1901–October 1, 1974) was one of the premier Greek archaeologists of the 20th century, whose most notable discovery was the site of the Minoan port city on the island of Thera destroyed and preserved by the massive volcanic eruption, ca 1650-1600 BCE, spawning myths of Atlantis. Marinatos began excavating there in 1967, and he was destined to die at the site, suffering a massive stroke.
Marinatos was director-general of antiquities for the Greek Ministry of Culture during the autocratic rule of the colonels. The acquaintance he cultivated with the colonels who were in power in Greece, especially the widely-despised Georgios Papadopoulos, opened bureaucratic doors for him, but created controversy among his academic peers.
His Crete and Mycenae (1960) was originally published in Greek, 1959. His summing-up of the excavations on Santorini is "Life and Art in Prehistoric Thera," Proceedings of the British Academy, vol. 57 (1972).
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