Radiocarbon dating the Greek Protogeometric and Geometric periods: The evidence of Sindos.

Stefanos Gimatzidis,Bernhard Weninger,Victoria C Smith

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0232906

Stefanos Gimatzidis, Bernhard Weninger + Show 1 more

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https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0232906

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Journal: PloS one	Publication Date: May 27, 2020
Citations: 12	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: Austrian Academy of Sciences, University of Cologne

Abstract

Mediterranean Early Iron Age chronology was mainly constructed by means of Greek Protogeometric and Geometric ceramic wares, which are widely used for chronological correlations with the Aegean. However, Greek Early Iron Age chronology that is exclusively based on historical evidence in the eastern Mediterranean as well as in the contexts of Greek colonisation in Sicily has not yet been tested by extended series of radiocarbon dates from well-dated stratified contexts in the Aegean. Due to the high chronological resolution that is only achievable by (metric-scale) stratigraphic 14C-age-depth modelling, the analysis of 21 14C-AMS dates on stratified animal bones from Sindos (northern Greece) shows results that immediately challenge the conventional Greek chronology. Based on pottery-style comparisons with other sites, the new dates for Sindos not only indicate a generally higher Aegean Early Iron Age chronology, but also imply the need for a revised understanding of the Greek periodisation system that will foreseeably have a major impact on our understanding of Greek and Mediterranean history.

Highlights

In contrast to the Near East, where ancient cities often have the form of tell mounds, even the best excavated settlements in central and southern Greece have rarely yielded the long and continuous vertical stratigraphies that in other regions so readily support typo-chronological studies of their material inventories, at high temporal resolution
It is noteworthy that the traditional sequence of Protogeometric and Geometric periods is well-confirmed by the stratified 14C-ages from Sindos
Implications of the revision of Greek chronology on Aegean and Mediterranean archaeology It is especially for the younger sections of the Aegean Early Iron Age, in particular for the Late Protogeometric and Geometric periods, that the new data from Sindos may have an impact in our general perception of the cultural and social transformations that took place in the Mediterranean

Summary

Introduction

In contrast to the Near East, where ancient cities often have the form of tell mounds, even the best excavated settlements in central and southern Greece have rarely yielded the long and continuous vertical stratigraphies that in other regions so readily support typo-chronological studies of their material inventories, at high temporal resolution. In Greece, the continuous settlement stratigraphies with well-dated successive layers, that cover many hundreds of years, are a privilege of the ‘northern periphery’ of the Aegean In this region, dense networks of tellbased settlements developed continuously during the Bronze and Early Iron Age (Fig 1). In spite of the steadily increasing number of excavations, in central and southern Greece the Early Iron Age is still better known through cemeteries than settlements This unfortunate deficiency in Greek archaeology has partly to do with the fact that the architecture of Early Iron Age settlements is often badly preserved, e.g. at Athens and Corinth. As goes for the present Sindos-series, the strongest age-distortion applies to the youngest date (ID2, MAMS-27019: 2552 ± 23 BP) This is recognisable, both from the extreme length of its error-bar as well as from the strong age-shift of the corresponding Barcode-line.

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