Sbe-Rcuk: Radiocarbon Dating And Chronological Modelling

斯坦福大学的伊恩·霍德博士和英国斯特林大学的亚历克斯·贝利斯博士将开展合作研究，以首次建立早期社会发展的详细年表。考古学家可以获得数据，从而探索从小型移动乐队到定居城镇的广泛人类发展。但对于早期史前时期，考古年代学有很大的误差，因此只能记录总体趋势。放射性碳测年统计分析的新发展使人们有了全新的见解，从而可以建立更详细的年表。这样，历史尺度的分辨率就可以应用于较深的史前研究。通过将事件追溯到9000年前的四分之一个世纪以前，研究人员将能够更详细地研究导致重大进化变化的原因，如第一个大型“巨型遗址”的形成、牛的驯化和陶器的引入。这些结果将改变人们对导致定居农业生活和早期城市发展的过程的理解。该项目将以联合国教科文组织中东世界遗产为中心，由于项目成员和土耳其政府的持续努力，该遗址正在吸引越来越多的全球游客。这些举措包括雄心勃勃的教育计划和广泛的外展活动，以便研究成果能够被广泛传播和讨论。为9000年前的1000年建立一个详细的日历年表，将允许研究(A)陶器、挤奶、驯化牛等新发明的变化速度。研究人员将能够探索变化是作为一股持续的、不可察觉的溪流来的，还是作为一系列突然的、断断续续的革命而来的。气候变化对这一时期社会发展的影响也可以与其他情况进行对比。更详细的年表还将使人们能够深入了解(B)社会的组织，因为可以评估邻近建筑物和其他结构的当代性程度。最后，有可能(C)探讨宗教和仪式的各个方面。研究人员将能够研究在这些遥远的史前时代，人们是否有一种“历史感”，即他们将重要的传家宝--包括动物和人头--代代相传。这项研究将基于土耳其中部圣塔尔霍尤克的出土材料。该遗址于20世纪60年代首次挖掘，自1993年以来，新的挖掘工作一直在继续。该遗址因其面积(13公顷)、保存完好的泥砖建筑、戏剧性的壁画和浮雕以及覆盖1000多年的20米新石器时代沉积物而闻名。该项目将通过使用贝叶斯统计模型提供精确的年代测定，将一系列650个放射性碳测年与现代发掘的详细地层记录结合在一起。该奖项是通过SBE-RCUK牵头机构协议实现的。

Dr Ian Hodder, of Stanford University, along with Dr Alex Bayliss of the University of Stirling in the UK, will undertake collaborative research in order to build for the first time a detailed chronology for early societal development. Archaeologists have access to data that allow exploration of the broad sweep of human development from small mobile bands to settled towns and cities. But for early prehistoric time periods archaeological chronologies have wide margins of error so that only general trends can be documented. New developments in the statistical analysis of radiocarbon dates are allowing radical new insights so that more detailed chronologies can be built. In this way a historical scale of resolution can be applied to deep prehistory. By tying events down to quarter-century resolution at 9000 years ago, the researchers will be able to examine in more detail the causes that led to important evolutionary changes such as the formation of the first large "mega-sites", the domestication of cattle and the introduction of pottery. The results will transform understanding of the processes that led to settled agricultural life and early urban development. The project will be centered on a UNESCO World Heritage Site in the Middle East that is attracting increasing global visitor numbers due to the sustained efforts of project members and the government of Turkey. The initiatives include ambitious educational programs and a wide range of outreach activities so that the results of the research can be widely disseminated and discussed.Establishing a detailed calendar chronology for a 1000-year period 9000 years ago, will allow study (a) of the pace of change for new innovations such as pottery, milking, domestication of cattle. Researchers will be able to explore whether change comes as a constant, imperceptible stream or as a series of abrupt, punctuated revolutions. The impact of climatic change on societal development during this time period can also be examined and contrasted to other cases. A more detailed chronology will also allow insight into (b) the organization of society because the degree of contemporaneity of adjacent buildings and other structures can be assessed. Finally, it will be possible (c) to explore aspects of religion and ritual. Researchers will be able to study whether in these distant prehistoric times people had a sense of "history" in the sense that they kept and handed down important heirlooms, including animal and human heads, from generation to generation. The research will be based on excavated material from Çatalhöyük in central Turkey. The site was first excavated in the 1960s, and new excavations have continued since 1993. The site has gained renown for its size (13 ha), its well-preserved mud-brick architecture, for its dramatic wall paintings and relief sculpture, and for its 20 m of Neolithic deposits covering over 1000 years. The project will provide precise dating by using Bayesian statistical modelling to combine a series of 650 radiocarbon dates with the detailed stratigraphic record of the modern excavations.This award was made possible by the SBE-RCUK Lead Agency Agreement.