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Iron Age Mediterranean Chronology: A Rejoinder

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2016

Alexander Fantalkin ,
Israel Finkelstein  and
Eli Piasetzky
Alexander Fantalkin
Affiliation:
The Sonia and Marco Nadler Institute of Archaeology; Tel Aviv University, Israel.
Israel Finkelstein*
Affiliation:
The Sonia and Marco Nadler Institute of Archaeology; Tel Aviv University, Israel.
Eli Piasetzky
Affiliation:
School of Physics and Astronomy, Tel Aviv University, Israel.
*
Corresponding author. Email: fink2@post.tau.ac.il.
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Abstract

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This article is a rejoinder to a recent paper in this journal by van der Plicht et al. (2009) who use radiocarbon determinations from several sites in Israel, Italy, Spain, and Tunisia to advocate a High Chronology system for the entire Mediterranean Basin. We contend that they reached mistaken conclusions due to problematic selection of sites and data. We argue that a reliable way to provide absolute dates for the Iron Age in the central and western Mediterranean is by employing a combination of well-identified Greek pottery found in well-stratified sites and radiometric results from short-lived samples. For the time being, this combination exists only in the Levant, and provides an anchor for Greek chronology, which supports the Conventional Chronology for the Aegean Basin, which corresponds to the Low Chronology in the Levant.

Type
Comments and Replies
Information
Radiocarbon , Volume 53 , Issue 1 , 2011 , pp. 179 - 198
Copyright
Copyright © 2011 The Arizona Board of Regents on behalf of the University of Arizona 

References

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