Akrotiri, a Minoan Bronze Age town located on the Greek island of Santorini, reopened to tourists today. The archaeological site closed after a roof covering the excavation area collapsed in 2005, killing one man and injuring six others. Last year, 12 people were put on trial, including civil engineers, architects, and construction workers who were building the steel roof, for manslaughter through neglect, causing bodily harm, damaging a monument, and violating building regulations, which are all misdemeanors. Eight of them received short prison sentences. A new roof has been completed over the ancient town, which was destroyed in the seventeenth-century B.C. by a volcanic eruption.

Businessman Mario Resca was appointed Italy’s culture minister in 2008, and he would like to promote private investment in the country’s museums and galleries as a way to stimulate the economy and increase their operating budgets. He would like to position Italy as the world’s premiere culture destination for tourists.

PhD candidate Chantel Summerfield of Bristol University is recording arborglyphs—inscriptions left on trees—made by soldiers, and then tracking down what happened to those soldiers. She has also compared the arborglyphs left by men in training situations, and those in combat. “As the world wars are slipping away from living memory for most people, it strikes me as being more important than ever that these things are properly recorded for future generations,” she explained.

American Indians built a series of canals in southern Florida long before the arrival of Europeans in order to shorten their trade routes. Many of the canals were filled in during the early twentieth-century, but archaeologists have caught glimpses of a 4,150-foot-long canal connecting the Gulf of Mexico to Naples Bay during construction projects. They would like to excavate a section of it that located on property owned by the city of Naples. “We have big ideas, possibly opening an area where tourists can see the excavation and having a marked Naples Canal trail,” said archaeologist Bob Carr.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Thursday, April 12, 2012. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

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