Subject: AEGEANET ULUBURUN DATE REVISITED
From: "Peter James" 
Date: Sun, 23 Dec 2001 01:43:17 -0000
To: "Aegeanet" 

Some time ago I posted a message questioning the value of a dendro date of
1305 BC which was being widely cited for the Uluburun shipwreck.  As the
cargo included a scarab of Nefertiti and Mycenaean pottery, the date was
believed to provide vital support for the accepted dating of the Egyptian
New Kingdom and the Aegean LBA.  I mentioned many problems with this result,
mainly concerning the sample, and too many to rehearse here, but I will
gladly repost my original note if there is interest.  A copy was sent to
Peter Kuniholm at Cornell, whose team produced the date.

Perhaps my message had some effect, as I am now glad to note the following,
commendably frank, statement in Kuniholm's latest article, published
yesterday (21st Dec.):

"Caution should be exercised concerning a previously stated date derived
from just two poorly preserved pieces of cargo/dunnage wood from the famous
Uluburun shipwreck (refs). The quality and security of the
dendrochronological placement of these samples versus the Bronze-Iron master
chronology are not especially strong."

Reference: n. 38 on last page of S. W. Manning, Kromer, B., Kuniholm, P.,
I., Newton, M. W., 2001. "Anatolian Tree Rings and a New Chronology for the
East Mediterranean Bronze-Iron Ages", Science 294, 2532-2535.

NB the dates still await formal publication, but given the virtual
retraction of the date one imagines this may no longer be a priority.

Assuming we now discount the Uluburun result, there now seem to be no
published example of an LBA dendro date from Anatolia which clearly supports
the accepted Egyptian-based chronology.  The only fully published dates for
LBA Anatolia are those from Tille Ho"yu"k, where the cutting dates for timbers
in an apparently imperial Hittite gateway are 1101 ±1.  Kuniholm's latest
adjustment (explained in the above article) raises the dates for the master
dendro sequence involved by 22 years.  Even so, a post quem for the
construction of the Tille Ho"yu"k Gateway of 1123 +4/-7 BC, is surely still
too low for the conventional chronology, but in line with that we argued in
Centuries of Darkness.  (See Dendrochronology section in
http://www.centuries.co.uk/faq.htm on our website.)  The situation may be
even more acute than that.  While 1101 (now 1123) has been the result cited
in secondary articles, the formal publication of the dates (Tille Ho"yu"k site
report) reveal that the best fit for this sample (using the normal T-score
statistical test) is actually in 942 ± 1 BC (now 964 +4/-7 BC).

Best,

Peter James
www.centuries.co.uk

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