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One very long lasting debatein Bronze Age Mediterraneanarchaeology has to do withattempting to match calendardates to those associated withEgyptian regnal lists. To somescholars, the debate hengeson a single olive branch.
Egyptian Dynastic History istraditionally split into threeKingdoms (during which a bighunk of the Nile valley wasconsistently unified),separated by two intermediateperiods (when non-Egyptiansruled Egypt).
(The late Egyptian Ptolemaicdynasty, established by
Alexander the Great's generals and including the famous Cleopatra, has no suchproblem). The two most-used chronologies today are called "High" and "Low"--the "Low"being the younger--and with some variations, these chronologies are used by scholarsstudying all of the Mediterranean Bronze Age.
As a rule these days, historians generally use the "High" chronology. These dates werecompiled using historical records produced during the lives of the pharaohs, and someradiocarbon dates of archaeological sites, and have been tweaked over the past centuryand a half. But, the controversy continues, as illustrated by a series of articles in Antiquityas recently as 2014.
A Tighter Chronology
Beginning in the 21st century, a team of scholars led by Christopher Bronk-Ramsay at theOxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit contacted museums and obtained non-mummifiedplant material (basketry, plant-based textiles, and plant seeds, stems and fruits) tied tospecific pharaohs.
Those samples, like the Lahun papyrus in the image, were carefully selected to be"short-lived samples from impeccable contexts", as Thomas Higham has described them.The samples were radiocarbon-dated using AMS strategies, providing the last column ofdates in the table below.
High and Low Bronze Age Chronologies
Event High Low Bronk-Ramsey et al
Old Kingdom Start 2667 BC 2592 BC 2591-2625 cal BC
Old Kingdom End 2345 BC 2305 BC 2423-2335 cal BC
Middle Kingdom Start 2055 BC 2009 BC 2064-2019 cal BC
Middle Kingdom End 1773 BC 1759 BC 1797-1739 cal BC
New Kingdom Start 1550 BC 1539 BC 1570-1544 cal BC
New Kingdom End 1099 BC 1106 BC 1116-1090 cal BC
In general, the radiocarbon dating supports the conventionally used High chronology,except perhaps that the dates for Old and New Kingdoms are slightly older than that of thetraditional chronologies. But the issue has yet to be resolved, in part because of theproblems associated with dating the Santorini eruption.
The Santorini Eruption
Santorini is a volcano located on the island of Thera in the Mediterranean Sea. During theLate Bronze Age of the 16th-17th centuries BC, Santorini erupted, violently, pretty muchputting an end to the Minoan civilization and disturbing, as you might imagine, all thecivilizations within the Mediterranean region. Archaeological evidence sought for the dateof the eruption has included local evidence of a tsunami and interrupted groundwatersupplies, as well as acidity levels in ice cores as far away as Greenland.
Dates for when this massive eruption occurred are startlingly controversial. The mostprecise radiocarbon date for the occurrence is 1627-1600 BC, based on the branch of anolive tree that was buried by ashfall from the eruption; and on animal bones on the Minoanoccupation of Palaikastro. But, according to archaeo-historical records, the eruption took
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Lahun Papyrus 10419a, Late Middle Kingdom (2025-1700 BC).Courtesy of Ezra Marcus
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place during the founding of the New Kingdom, ca. 1550 BC. None of the chronologies,not High, not Low, not the Bronk-Ramsay radiocarbon study, suggest that the NewKingdom was founded any earlier than ca. 1550.
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High and Low Chronologies of the Mediterranean Bronze Age http://archaeology.about.com/od/bronzeage/fl/High-and-Low-Chronolo...
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