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Signs of trade. Large storage jars, or pithoi, stand where they were discovered in a storeroom at the northern end of the excavation area. The produce contained in the pithoi may have been distributed through the window at upper left.

Much of the grain once held by these pithoi might have come from the Greek mainland or from Crete: Thera itself had very little cultivable land. Akrotiri’s wealth derived from its seafaring trade; the extent of that trade is suggested by the fact that about half of all the earliest type of stirrup jars—used for transporting liquids such as olive oil and wine—recovered from the entire Aegean, including the prosperous Minoan civilization of Crete, comes from barely excavated Akrotiri.

The pottery discovered in the city displays the influence of the local Cycladic culture, as well as the influence of Crete and mainland Greece, further testimony to the extent of the trade conducted by the islanders with peoples around the Aegean.