Linking the Dendrochronology of Northern Europe and the Mediterranean: Yenikapi

在美国国家科学基金会的三年支持下，首席研究员Peter Kuniholm和康奈尔树轮实验室将致力于建立一个绝对确定时间的东地中海树轮年表，可以追溯到公元前3000年，也可能是公元前7000年或更早。7500年的年表跨越9000年，但还没有建立一个单一的序列。重点将放在三个地区的样本收集上。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，以获取成千上万的亚化石橡木茎，其中一些不仅可以填补序列空白，而且可以追溯到10489年前，这是目前北欧橡木年表的限制。这些企业已同意提供它们所有长寿材料的切片。第二个“机会目标”是修建一条长达39公里、贯穿伊斯坦布尔市中心的地铁系统所提供的独特可能性。最近，为了挖掘和保存数百万件文物，隧道工程被推迟了一年，但隧道的完工日期被定为4年后。考古挖掘工作每天进行3次，每次8小时，在主要火车站的挖掘中——目前在Yenikapý， 800米x 400米x 25米深——到目前为止，已经贯穿了一系列奥斯曼帝国，拜占庭和罗马晚期的层次，其中一个部分可以追溯到新石器时代，那里最近出土了公元前6千年的渔民小屋。在过去的三年里，Kuniholm的团队在Yenikapý收集了2000多个不同时期的桩基，在未来的三到四年里，他们预计将收集3000多个早期时期的桩基。从希腊北部、土耳其黑海沿岸和多瑙河（甚至可能是多瑙河上游）进口的木材已经被确认，从而阐明了进口和出口的模式。最后，库尼霍尔姆博士正在与保加利亚和欧盟的一个研究小组合作进行“水下景观，重建史前古环境和定居模式”的研究，该小组的共同负责人（瓦兹尼）是树木年代学部分的主席。预计每年将从这些来源中检索大约1000个树木年代学样本，其中一些已经提供了爱琴海橡木年代学和绝对确定年代的北欧橡木年代学之间的联系。建立一个从现在到新石器时代或更早的连续的树木年轮时间线，可以追溯到近东、爱琴海和巴尔干地区的各种文化的年份，目前只有很少的联系。如果克罗地亚和波斯尼亚的河流产生了人们可能合理预期的结果，这也将允许校准欧洲橡树的放射性碳时间标，直到现在的公元前8480年。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。这笔拨款还将帮助实验室保持高水平的生产力，并允许它继续发挥指导作用。

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.