Cutting the Gordian Knot of tree-ring timelines in the East Mediterranean Bronze Age, and looking for a date for the Santorini/Thera eruption that destroyed the Minoan civilization.
[sciencythoughts.blogspot.com]
Tree-ring records constructed from ancient wooden timbers can provide calendar-dated frameworks to underpin archaeological and palaeoenvironmental chronologies beyond the reach of written evidence. They can provide securely dated records of construction, abandonment, and trade across different cultural regions while simultaneously providing calendar-dated, annual resolution records of contemporary climatic variability. As such, they represent an invaluable resource for studies of past human and environmental interactions and for the resolution of complex chronological issues. However, for certain key geographic regions and time periods, the only tree-ring records preserved are not calendar dated to the exact year but rather, 'float' in time, dated with less precision and accuracy by radiocarbon wiggle-match dating (a dating method that uses the non-linear relationship between Carbon¹⁴ age and calendar age to match the shape of a series of closely sequentially spaced Carbon¹⁴ dates with the Carbon¹⁴ calibration curve). While this approach can produce excellent results for certain time periods, limitations of the method include multiyear error ranges and the fact that calibrated date ranges may shift forward or backward in time depending on which iteration of the international radiocarbon calibration curve is used for calibration. The full benefits of the annually derived tree-ring record for establishing rigid archaeological chronologies for cultural interaction plus the impacts of climatic or geological events on ancient civilizations can be fully realized only by securely fixing such records in a precise and accurate calendar-dated range.