Tree-rings, environmental/climate change, and history in the east Mediterranean
by
Sturt W. Manning
Department of Archaeology, University of Reading, UK
Coauthors: Peter Ian Kuniholm (The Malcolm and Carolyn Wiener Laboratory for Aegean and Near Eastern Dendrochronology, B-48 Goldwin Smith Hall, Cornell University), Bernd Kromer (Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften), Maryanne W. Newton (The Malcolm and Carolyn Wiener Laboratory for Aegean and Near Eastern Dendrochronology, B-48 Goldwin Smith Hall, Cornell University)

Three decades of work by the Aegean Dendrochronology Project led by Peter Ian Kuniholm have established long tree-ring sequences for the Aegean-east Mediterranean region, including a large near-absolutely dated sequence covering the later 3rd through earlier 1st millennia BC (the Bronze-Iron Age chronology). The Bronze-Iron Age chronology is central to the dating of many Aegean-Near Eastern sites, and puts significant constraints on key - and still debated - historical chronologies. A new near-absolute dating of this chronology was reported at the end of 2001, based on a high-precision radiocarbon (14C) wiggle-match analysis, and this has been confirmed by further recent work.

The now well-dated Aegean Dendrochronological record provides access to evidence relevant to some key environmental events, and climate change episodes, of significance to culture history in the eastern Mediterranean region. In this talk I will consider two key instances: (i) the evidence for rapid solar-driven climate change as a key driver of civilisation change in the Aegean (and wider Mediterranean) in the late 9th through earlier 8th century BC, and (ii) the issue of the dating and impact of the Santorini (Thera) volcanic eruption in terms of the surrounding civilisations.

Date received: August 15, 2002

Copyright © 2002 by the author(s). The author(s) of this document and the organizers of the conference have granted their consent to include this abstract in Atlas Conferences Inc. Document # caji-56.