The Thera Debate The final group of papers in this volume offers current assessments of the important topic of the date of the Minoan eruption of the Thera/Santorini volcano in the mid second millennium bc. Did this event occur in the mid to late 17th century bc (the “high” chronology) or the later 16th century bc to around 1500 bc (the “low” chronology)? Much hangs on this question for understanding the history of the Aegean and Mediterranean in the Late Bronze Age. It is perhaps the most controversial topic in the field at present, and has been a source of active scholarly debate since 1939 when S. Marinatos first posited a date of 1500 bc, and especially since the 1960s when Marinatos began the modern excavations at Akrotiri, which have continued for the last quarter century under Christos Doumas. A series of Thera Conferences over the years has not resolved the issue. For readers unfamiliar with the earlier part of the controversy, its first several decades were reviewed in Kuniholm 1990 (see page xvi for reference. See also Doumas, this volume). Two publications appeared in 2006 in Science by Friedrich et al. and Manning et al. which stimulated a new phase of scholarly exchanges on the date of the Thera/Santorini eruption. At the Cornell conference Malcolm Wiener was invited to offer his assessment of the debate. Bernd Kromer, Walter Kutschera, and Sturt Manning included discussion of the recent 2006 papers (of which they had been co-authors), and of current work since, in their presentations at Cornell. In the papers that follow here, Malcolm Wiener provides a detailed survey of the debate and a critique of the Science articles in his “Cold Fusion: The Uneasy Alliance of History and Science” starting on page 277. Papers by Friedrich et al. and Manning et al. then follow (on pages 293 and 299 respectively). These articles each assess the debate to the date of writing, and address various of the points raised by Malcolm Wiener in his conference presentation. There then follows a very current discussion, starting on page 317, with Malcolm Wiener’s reply to the Friedrich et al. and Manning et al. papers in this volume followed by two short comments added at proof stage by Walter Friedrich (page 327) and Sturt Manning (page 327). A final response by Malcolm Wiener, beginning on page 328, concludes the volume. This group of papers thus provides readers with a stimulating exchange of ongoing views and scholarly disagreements surrounding this important but controversial topic as current as of ad 2009.