Linking the Dendrochronology of Northern Europe and the Mediterranean: Yenikapi

在国家科学基金会三年的支持下，首席研究员彼得·库尼霍尔姆和康奈尔树轮实验室将致力于完成东地中海树木年轮的绝对年代测定，完整到公元前3000年，可能到公元前7000年或更早。已经建立了跨越9000年但尚未形成单一序列的7500年的年表。重点将放在三个地区的样本采集上。第一个是对克罗地亚和波斯尼亚的河流进行大规模的商业开采，以获取数千株亚化石橡树，其中一些不仅可以填补层序空白，还可能追溯到10489年前之前，也就是目前北欧橡树年表的极限。这些企业已经同意提供他们所有长寿材料的切片。第二个“机会目标”是建设一条贯穿伊斯坦布尔市中心的39公里长的地铁系统所带来的独特可能性。隧道的建设最近被推迟了一年，以便有更多的时间挖掘和保存数百万件考古文物，但隧道的完工日期定于四年后。在主要火车站的挖掘中，考古挖掘工作每天分三个8小时轮班进行--目前在叶尼卡普，目前为800米×400米×25米深--到目前为止，已经穿透了一系列奥斯曼帝国、拜占庭和罗马晚期的水平，并在一个部分，最早可以追溯到新石器时代，在那里最近出土了公元前6千年的木板和涂抹的渔民小屋。在过去的三年里，库尼霍尔姆的团队已经从Yenikap斧山的不同时期收集了2000多根桩，在接下来的三四年里，预计将从早期收集3000多根桩。从希腊北部、土耳其黑海海岸和多瑙河--甚至可能是多瑙河上游--进口的木材已经被识别出来，从而揭示了进出口模式。最后，库尼霍尔姆博士正在与保加利亚和欧盟的一个名为“水下景观，重建史前古环境和聚落格局(S)”的研究项目合作，该项目的共同负责人(瓦兹尼)是树干年代学部分的主席。预计每年将从这些来源提取约1000个树状年代学样本，其中一些已经提供了爱琴海橡树年代学和绝对确定日期的北欧橡树年代学之间的联系。建立从现在到新石器时代或更早的连续的年轮时间线，可以将近东、爱琴海和巴尔干地区的各种文化追溯到这一年，目前这些文化之间的联系很差。如果克罗地亚和波斯尼亚的河流产生人们可能合理预期的产量，这也将允许在当前的公元前8480年之前校准欧洲橡树放射性碳时间标尺。康奈尔树轮实验室是美国领先的科学组织，在培养本科生和研究生的树木年代学方面发挥着重要作用。这笔赠款还将帮助实验室保持较高的生产力水平，并使其继续发挥指导作用。

With three years of National Science Foundation support, the principal investigator, Peter Kuniholm, and the Cornell Tree-Ring Laboratory will work to finish building an absolutely-dated tree-ring chronology for the Eastern Mediterranean complete back to 3000 BC and possibly to 7000 BC or before. 7500 years' worth of chronologies spanning 9000 years but not yet in a single sequence has already been constructed. Focus will be placed on sample collection from three regions. The first is a large-scale commercial exploitation of Croatian and Bosnian rivers for thousands of stems of subfossil oak, some of which will not only fill sequence gaps but may go back in time to before 10,489 years ago, the present limit of oak chronologies for Northern Europe. The enterprises have agreed to supply slices of all their long-lived material. A second 'target of opportunity' is the unique possibility afforded by the construction of a 39-kilometer-long subway system through the heart of downtown Istanbul. The construction of the tunnel has recently been postponed for a year in order to allow more time for excavation and preservation of some millions of archaeological artifacts, but the completion date for the tunnel is scheduled for four years from now. Archaeological excavations operating in three 8-hour shifts per day in the excavation for the main train station - at Yenikapý at present 800 meters x 400 meters x 25 meters deep - have so far penetrated through a long series of Ottoman, Byzantine, and late Roman levels, and in one segment as far back as the Neolithic where recently wattle-and-daub fishermen's huts from the 6th millennium BC were unearthed. In the past three years Kuniholm's team has collected over 2000 pilings from a variety of periods at Yenikapý and in the next three or four years expect to collect 3000 more from the earlier periods. Imported wood from Northern Greece, the Black Sea coast of Turkey, and the Danube - perhaps even up the Danube itself - has already been identified, thereby shedding light on patterns of import and export. Finally Dr. Kuniholm is collaborating with a Bulgarian and EU research effort "Submerged Landscapes, Reconstructing Palaeoenvironment and Settlement Pattern(s) in Prehistory," of which the co-PI (Wazny) is the chairman of the dendrochronological segment. It is expected to retrieve about 1000 dendrochronological samples a year from these sources, some of which are already providing links between the Aegean oak chronology and the absolutely-dated North European oak chronology. Building a continuous tree-ring time-line from the present to the Neolithic or earlier will allow dating to the year for a variety of cultures in the Near East, Aegean, and Balkans, at present only poorly linked. If the Croatian and Bosnian rivers yield what one might reasonably expect, this will also permit calibration of the European oak radiocarbon timescale before the current 8480 BC. The Cornell Tree-Ring Laboratory is a leading US scientific organization and plays a major role in training undergraduate and graduate students in dendrochronology. This grant will also help to maintain the laboratory at it high level of productivity and allow it to continue in its mentoring role.