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Debate The olive-branch dating of the Santorini eruption
Figure 1. a) Satellite view of Santorini, showing the shape of the volcanic caldera ( c NASA; Akrotiri is marked with a square); b) an example of the volcanic layers found across Santorini ( c Tom Pfeiffer/www.volcanodiscovery.com).
importance for understanding the interconnections and influences between the ancient civilisations of the Aegean, Egypt and the Near East. The eruption has been dated near to the beginning of the New Kingdom in Egypt by a range of archaeological evidence. This dating appears to be strongly supported by the presence and sequence of Egyptian artefacts found in the Aegean as well as by large amounts of Cypriot pottery of various phases found both in Egypt and in one notable case also in the Theran volcanic destruction layer. It is also supported by the presence of pumice sourced to the Theran eruption in archaeological contexts in Egypt, the Near East and Cyprus (Doumas 2010), whereas all pumice found in earlier contexts has been sourced to other, earlier eruptions in the Dodecanese (Manning et al. 2006, 2009; Friedrich & Heinemeier 2009; Friedrich et al. 2009; Heinemeier et al. 2009). Over the past 40 years, various studies have cited proxy evidence (ice-core acidity peaks and tree-rings) to place the Thera eruption around a century earlier, in 1628 or 1650 BC (LaMarche & Hirschboeck 1984; Baillie & Munro 1988). These apparent proxy connections (Pearson et al. 2009) are difficult to substantiate. They have recently gained apparent support (e.g. Manning et al. 2006, 2009; Friedrich & Heinemeier 2009; Friedrich et al. 2009; Heinemeier et al. 2009) from the publication of radiocarbon dates based on
1 WSL Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research, Zurcherstrasse¨ 111, CH-8903 Birmensdorf, Switzerland (Email: [email protected] (author for correspondence), [email protected], [email protected]) 2 Department of Geography, University of Zurich, Winterthurerstrasse 190, CH-8057 Zurich,¨ Switzerland (Email: [email protected]) 3 Laboratory for Wood Biology and Xylarium, Royal Museum for Central Africa, Leuvense Steenweg 13, B-3080 Tervuren, Belgium (Email: [email protected]) 4 PSI Paul Scherrer Institute, CH-5232 Villigen, Switzerland (Email: [email protected]) 5 The Malcolm and Carolyn Wiener Laboratory for Aegean and Near Eastern Dendrochronology, B-48 Goldwin Smith Hall, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853–3201, USA (Email: [email protected]) 6 Bryant Bannister Tree-Ring Building, The University of Arizona, 1215 E. Lowell Street, Tucson,AZ 85721–0400, USA (Email: [email protected]) 7 Department of Science and Technology of the Environment and Territory, University of Molise, I-86090 Pesche, Italy (Email: [email protected]) 8 Department of Biology & Environment, Faculty of Natural Sciences, University of Haifa-Oranim, Tivon 36006, Israel (Email: [email protected])