Radiocarbon Dating Constrains the Reigns of Egyptian Rulers

[Viggen]

For several thousands of years, ancient Egypt dominated the Mediterranean world

[Melvadius]

I found the closing paragraphs interesting ,where differences of opinion on the dating methodology came to the fore, with radiocarbon and historical dating by University of Vienna's Manfred Bietak being questioned by Sturt Manning at Cornell University,

 

Unfortunately with a quick check I couldn't find out if Bietak's team dating of Tell el-Dab'a in Egypt was derived using the more accurate Bayesian methodology, increasingly being used for deriving probable dates oif sites, or if it was derived using the previous less accurate 'uncalibrated' radiocarbon dating methodology. I suspect it was through earlier methods as at least one report on the web seemed to indicate a 2006 date for some work there.

 

Although a useful dating method, previously published radiocarbon dates generally have a lot more uncertainty than is understood by the media. There ahs been a tendency to only publish the 'central' possible date rather than making clear that radiocarbon dating gives a date range which could be several hundred years wide .

 

As is now being seen by laboratory analysis in some cases the previous most likely 'core' dates are hundreds if not thousands of years adrift from what is now being suggested using bayesian methodology. The bayesian dates also tend to have a smaller degree of uncertainty so rather than plus or minus a few hundred years the potential range may drop to plus or minus a few tens of years.

[Viggen]

...interesting, i found the link for the research lab in vienna, i am not a nuclear physicist, so maybe you find the answer there you were looking for

http://isotopenforschung.univie.ac.at/index.php?id=1570

[Melvadius]

...interesting, i found the link for the research lab in vienna, i am not a nuclear physicist, so maybe you find the answer there you were looking for

http://isotopenforschung.univie.ac.at/index.php?id=1570

 

 

Thanks for this Viggen, it gave me a necessary lead and with some further checking it appears that although VERA is using Bayesian calibration to constrain their results there are still issues with it. Another document gives some more information as in part it states:

 

...In rare cases such as Tell el-Daba there is a link to the Historical Chronology of Ancient Egypt. It is fair to say that the agreement of 14C dates with the archaeological evidence linked to the historical chronology of Egypt is not satisfactory. The main bone of contention is the volcanic eruption date of Santorini (Thera) in the middle of the Second Millennium BC, where a currently irreconcilable offset of 100 to 150 years between 14C dating and the archaeological assessment persists, with older ages derived from the 14C measurements (Friedrich et al. 2006, Manning et al. 2006, Bruins et al. 2008). A commentary on this situation can be found by Balter (2006)....

 

The problems with exisiting radiocarbon dates appear to derive in part from the 'ABA' process which was traditionally used by laboratories, at least recently, VERA were still using this method to remove contaminants from samples before they are tested. Oxford is developing a number of improved methods ,including single amino acid dating, as the 'ABOx-SC' technique for removing contaminants from carbon is apparently giving vastly improved results. N.B. as I've mentioned elsewhere contaminants can affect C14 dating as can the presence of 'older' or 'younger' C14 in the samples being tested so smaller samples may in future generate better and more relaible results.

 

It is a bit outside our normal area of interest but I was recently told that during retesting by Oxford using their new methodology rather than the ABA preparation method approximatley 70% of published dates for the Middle Paleolithic to Aurignacian Transition in Europe 9around 30,000-40,000 BP) appear to be wrong.

 

If the new Oxford results are correct then, even though from a more recent period in history, it argues the case that the dates derived for Tell el-Daba may also need to be retested using the same methodology.