Absolute Tree-Ring Chronology for the Last 5000 Years for the Eastern Mediterranean

在美国国家科学基金会的支持下，Peter Kuniholm博士和他的合作者将继续为东地中海建造一个主要的树木年轮曲线，并为考古遗址提供精确的日期。树木年代学（树木年轮测年）是已知最精确的测年技术，理论上可以确定一年，有时在理想的情况下也可以确定一年中的特定季节。由于年生长增量的厚度受温度和降雨的影响，年际变化允许研究人员从活树开始，绘制从今天开始日期开始的厚度或密度曲线，然后通过考古和地质背景的样本进一步向后扩展该系列。这些确定年代的树木年轮序列也被用作仪器测量存在之前古气候重建的代表。库尼霍尔姆博士和他的同事们已经工作了多年（迄今为止进行了1000万次显微镜测量），为希腊、土耳其、意大利、前南斯拉夫、黎巴嫩和地中海东部的其他国家构建了主要的年表，现在涵盖了过去9200年中的约6500年。他们的工作已经证明，需要重新解释一些放射性碳年代，在全球变冷期间抵消20-30年的影响。他们2003-2006年的工作重点将是公元/公元前过渡时期前后的几个世纪，这是他们年表上的一个“空白”，因为大量的罗马建筑是用石头建造的，因此没有倒塌，并像青铜器时代的泥砖建筑那样保存了木制建筑构件。在接下来的三年里，研究小组将专注于通过放射性碳摆动来填补这一“空白”——与82个不连续的年表或环序列相匹配，这些年表或环序列已经在那个时期开发出来。他们还将每年访问和分析地中海东部和近东地区40-50个地点的木材。到2006年6月底，最终结果应该是一个完整的，连续的，因此是过去5000年的绝对年表，这是我们所知道的整个识字文明时期。这个项目非常重要，因为由此产生的序列将使我们能够确定大量考古事件的绝对年代。由于该实验室涉及的本科生众多（每年超过20人），它将继续在科学教育中发挥重要作用。该实验室的40多名毕业生获得了博士学位，29多名获得了医学博士学位，100多名获得了各种硕士学位。

With National Science Foundation support, Dr. Peter Kuniholm and collaborators will continue to construct a master tree-ring curve for the Eastern Mediterranean and to provide precise dates for sites of archaeological interest. Dendrochronology (tree-ring dating) is the most accurate known dating technique with a theoretically possible resolution of one year, sometimes under ideal circumstances to a specific season within the year. Because the thickness of annual growth increments is affected by temperature and rainfall, internannual variations allow the researcher to start with living trees, plot a thickness or density curve back from today's starting date, and then extend the series further backward in time with the addition of samples from archaeological and geological contexts. These absolutely-dated tree-ring sequences are also being used as a proxy for palaeoclimatic reconstruction in the period before instrumental measurements exist. Dr. Kuniholm and his colleagues have worked for many years (10 million microscope measurements so far) to construct master chronologies for Greece, Turkey, Italy, the former Yugoslavia, Lebanon, and other countries in the Eastern Mediterranean, now covering some 6,500 of the last 9,200 years. Already their work has demonstrated a need for a re-interpretation of some radiocarbon dates with offsets of 20-30 years during periods of global cooling. The focus of their work for 2003-2006 will be the centuries on either side of the AD/BC transition, currently a "gap" in their chronology because of the large number of Roman buildings built in stone and which therefore did not collapse and preserve the wooden architectural members in the same way that Bronze Age mudbrick buildings do. Over the next three years the team will focus on fleshing out this "gap" by radiocarbon wiggle-matching the 82 discontinuous chronologies or ring-sequences already developed for that period. They will also visit and analyze wood from 40-50 sites a year in the eastern Mediterranean and Near East. The end-product by the end of June 2006 should be a complete, continuous, and therefore absolute chronology for the last 5000 years, the entire period of literate civilization as we know it. The project is extremely important because the resulting sequence will permit the absolute dating of large numbers of archaeological occurrences to the year. Because the laboratory involves many undergraduate students (over 20 a year) it will continue to play an important role is science education. More than 40 graduates of the lab have gone on to Ph.D. degrees, more than 29 to M.D. degrees, and over 100 to a Masters degree of one kind or another.