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A disastrous date

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

J. Alexander MacGillivray*
Affiliation:
*Ampelonon 50, Paiania 19002, Greece

Abstract

Paolo Cherubini and colleagues have demonstrated convincingly that the identification of olive wood tree-rings from Santorini is ‘practically impossible’. Thus, the single piece of evidence that might have persuaded some archaeologists to support the ‘high’ 1613±13 BC date for the Theran eruption is hors de combat. The Theran olive-tree branch has gone the way of the Greenland Ice Core results of similar date and which enjoyed a similar devoted following until shown to be from a different eruption. Taken with Malcolm Wiener's explicit exposé of the myriad shortcomings of 14C dating, especially for this time period and event, these results take us back to where we were before the ‘radiocarbon revolution‘, when the largest Holocene eruption in the ancient world happened as Minoan Crete enjoyed wideranging influence, perhaps even control, over the Aegean, when Late Minoan IA pottery styles proliferated, and Egypt was in the early stages of its New Kingdom period (Wiener 2012, 2013).

Type
Debate
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd. 2014

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References

MacGíllívray, J.A. 2009. Thera, Hatshepsut, and the Keftiu: crisis and response in Egypt and the Aegean, in Warburton, D.A. (ed.) Time's up! Dating the Minoan eruption of Santorini: Acts ofthe Minoan Eruption Chronology Workshop, Sandbjerg November 2007 (Monographs of the Danish institute at Athens 10): 148–64. Athens: Danish institute at Athens.Google Scholar
Wiener, M.H. 2012. Problems in the measurement, calibration, analysis, and communication of radiocarbon dates (with special reference to the prehistory of the Aegean world). Radiocarbon 54: 423–34. http://dx.doi.org/10.2458/azu_js_rc.v54i3-4.16231 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wiener, M.H. 2013. Realities of power: the Minoan thalassocracy in historical perspective, in Koehl, Robert B. (ed.) Amilla: the quest for excellence. Studies presented to Guenter Kopcke in celebration of his 75th birthday (INSTAP Prehistory Monographs 43): 149–73. Philadelphia: institute for Aegean Prehistory.Google Scholar