ANATOLIAN TREE-RINGS AND THE ABSOLUTE CHRONOLOGY OF THE EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN, 2220-718 BC

EXCELLENT preservation of wood and charcoal at archaeological sites in Anatolia has allowed the Aegean Dendrochronology Project to build abs olute and floating tree-ring sequences(1). One such floating dendrochr onology of 1,503 years includes samples relating to known rulers, site s and cultures of the ancient eastern Mediterranean. If this chronolog y could be dated precisely, many long-standing questions might be reso lved. Here we report 18 high-precision C-14 determinations which, when wiggle-matched to the radiocarbon calibration curve, provide a date w ithin narrow limits. Inside this range, we can suggest the probable ab solute dating of the dendrochronology because of a remarkable growth a nomaly in the seventeenth century BC, for which we propose a correlati on with major growth anomalies at 1628/1627 BC in the absolutely dated dendrochronologies of Europe and the United States. Many archaeologic al sites from several cultures in the eastern Mediterranean can now be dated with fine precision. This chronology has important implications for Old World archaeology and prehistory.