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Volcanoes, ice-cores and tree-rings: one story or two?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

M.G.L. Baillie
M.G.L. Baillie*
Affiliation:
*School of Geography, Archaeology and Palaeoecology, Elmwood Avenue, Queen's University, Belfast BT7 1NN, Northern Ireland, UK (Email: m.baillie@qub.ac.uk)
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Abstract

Good archaeology relies on ever more precise dates – obtainable, notably, from ice-cores and dendrochronology. These each provide year-by-year sequences, but they must be anchored at some point to real historical time, by a documented volcanic eruption, for example. But what if the dating methods don't agree? Here the author throws down the gauntlet to the ice-core researchers – their assigned dates are several years too old, probably due to the spurious addition of ‘uncertain’ layers. Leave these out and the two methods correlate exactly…

Keywords

datingdendrochronologyice-corecalibration
Type
Method
Information
Antiquity , Volume 84 , Issue 323 , March 2010 , pp. 202 - 215
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 2010

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