A large wooden table, the same as you would find in any major corporation, dominated the room around which sat over a dozen people encompassing a wide variety of ages and ethnicities.
At the head were two women in their mid-forties. One was short with long braided brown hair streaked with grays and kind brown eyes behind thick-rimmed glasses. The other was tall and statuesque, with blonde hair that had turned mostly white, though her face was still very youthful. Her hazel eyes were sharp as she took in the newcomers.
Recognition flashed in the tall woman’s eyes, her hard expression immediately softening into a smile. “Leta, good to see you got in on time. Your mom has been blowing up my phone since you left.” Doctor Annika Galloise smiled at her.
“I’m so sorry, my flight got delayed.”
The professor waved her off, saying, “Just glad you made it. Take a seat, we’ll get your things to the hotel once we wrap up here. Vigo Thompson, good to see you.”
Leta turned to the other woman that she believed to be Doctor Marrow, who gave her a warm, almost motherly smile. The woman was the definition of a petite, scholarly lady. She was in her early sixties with wavy, dark brown hair that was mostly gray by now and piled on her head in a bun. brown eyes twinkled behind half-moon wire glasses, her pale weathered skin standing out against her modest forest green dress.
“Lovely to meet you, Leta.” Doctor Marrow gave her a polite handshake. “I think you were maybe ten when I last saw you. Your father helped me identify seeds that were found in a jar at Herculaneum.”
Leta greeted the team and took a seat next to Pilar Flores, a Colombian student focusing on ancient maritime trade, and Chandi Jadhav, an Indian student from the Punjabi region with a focus on ancient stonework and architecture.
Captain Vasilis, whose deep-sea salvage company would be working on the site, arrived last. He was a large, round man, a veritable bear of a man, with gray hair, a hard stare, and enough chest and arm hair to rival a polar bear’s winter coat. He was dressed in a thin maritime shirt, cargo shorts, and old tennis shoes and smelled of wax and oil as if he had just been working on his ship before he arrived.
“Are we all here?” Doctor Marrow asked, pushing her glasses up her nose. “Right, let’s begin.”
She turned down the lights in the room and used a remote to flip on an overhead projector that lit up an aerial map of Santorini and its surrounding waters.
“Just a recap from what we discussed during our video call a few weeks ago: the site was originally discovered last year after a cyclone disturbed the underwater seabed and revealed structures. It’s taken a bit to survey the site, but as of this year, everything is in order so that we can move forward with excavating the site.”
She tapped the remote, and the map zoomed in to a small set of three islands over 15 kilometers southwest of Santorini, and below those, an ‘X’ was placed in what looked like the middle of the ocean.
“Our site is located three kilometers south of the Christiana Islands. Its elevation varies in depths of twenty to thirty meters, with most of the exposed structure near twenty-three meters. It is located on a stretch of volcanic rock that was probably above the surface and connected to the nearby islands at one point in time.”
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The image on the screen flipped to the survey sketch of the site, a mix of sonar, satellite, and other scans layered on top of each other and overplayed with a grid. “Surveys have currently put the site at just a little over half a square kilometer, but that is expected to grow as we uncover more.”
Doctor Galloise stepped forward and said, “The site is broken out into separate areas.” An image popped up on the screen with thick colored lines corralling around raised edges in the sand. “The main courtyard is in yellow, the inner courtyard is in light blue, the reception room is in red, private rooms are in orange, storage is in green, the elevated quarters are in white, and the unknown section is in black. This is the most decayed section, so we do not have this part defined yet.”
The colorized sections faded to black and white except for a small section of the northernmost wall that was orange. “The previous team began excavating the northwest wall of the site, which had private rooms and went one meter into the site. We will be continuing the excavation of the north wall to the south side and continue to excavate one meter into the complex.”
The image on the screen blinked away to pictures of the site taken underwater by the survey team, showing the sand-covered outline of a buried metropolis. It clicked again to show the progress the first team had made on the northern wall, as they revealed once smooth walls that had been weathered by time and the elements before flipping to small items found around the walls.
Doctor De Mar stood up as pieces of pottery and small sections of cuneiform tablets came on the screen.
“The items that have been recovered so far estimate this complex to have been in use around 2500 BCE. However, the layout of the site indicates that it is much older than that, with construction taking place sometime between 3500 and 2000 BCE. There are a lot of questions around this site, as you all are aware. What is the Mesopotamian-era complex doing in the middle of the Sea of Crete? Why was it here? What was it used for? We cannot answer these questions if we are not careful. I know everyone here has been on a dig at least once before, but please remember that this is an incredibly fragile site, and to be conscious of your surroundings.”
“Which brings us to the obstacles we are facing with this.” Doctor Galloise added, crossing her arms as she surveyed the room. “One, the dive site is situated four kilometers between two ferry lines, west and southeast, so be prepared for that. Second, there is a current in that area that is pushing west towards the busier ferry line, so if something goes loose, it may float that way. Third, this site sits just south of the volcanic Christiana Islands. They are uninhabited and will attract all kinds of wildlife, so keep this in mind during the dive. Vasilis, would you please talk about the boat and dive procedures?”
“Good morning.” Vasilis greeted everyone with a thick Greek accent. “Forecasts show no storms in the immediate future, but we are expecting to have easterly winds on some days that may make conditions impossible for diving. I will be monitoring the weather and sea conditions and will be in communication with Doctor Marrow and Doctor Galloise to see whether it is safe to be at the site before we depart. Please remember that it is roughly 24 kilometers, or just over twelve nautical miles, from the site to the shore. We will have first aid kits on the boat, but if you are seriously injured, it could take an hour to get you to a hospital.”
Vasilis reiterated basic scuba procedures, which were a requirement to be certified for this dig. He talked about the light at that depth, the clarity of the water, and some of the wildlife that they could expect to see before nodding to Doctor Galloise.
“What comes next is straightforward.”She spoke with a firm voice, her gaze sweeping over each member of the team, a steely determination in her eyes reminiscent of a general addressing troops before battle. “We have seats booked on the ferry to Santorini tomorrow morning at 7:25. You will be at the docks at 6 a.m. Remember, this is peak tourist season, and there will be a lot of us, so be on time. Also, it’s an eight-hour journey, so make sure to pack your go-bag accordingly. Once we arrive in Santorini, we will be getting to our hotel in Fira. You are welcome to go get dinner, but please be aware that breakfast is at 4 a.m., with a debrief by the outgoing team at 4:30. We will be leaving immediately after to head for the boat to be over the site at sunrise. Are there any questions?”
Seeing none, she nodded. “Right. Get some rest, people. We’ve got a long journey ahead of us tomorrow.