Common Era Research Articles

Hemispheric-scale heavy metal pollution from South American and Australian mining and metallurgy during the Common Era

Records from polar and alpine ice reflect past changes in background and industrial toxic heavy metal emissions. While Northern Hemisphere records have been used to evaluate environmental effects and linkages to historical events such as foreign conquests, plagues, economic downturns, and technological developments during the past three millennia, little is known about the magnitude and environmental effects of such emissions in the Southern Hemisphere or their historical linkages, especially prior to late 19th century industrialization. Here we used detailed measurements of the toxic heavy metals lead, cadmium, and thallium, as well as non-toxic bismuth, cerium, and sulfur in an array of five East Antarctic ice cores to investigate hemispheric-scale pollution during the Common Era. While thallium showed no anthropogenic increases, the other three metals increased by orders of magnitude in recent centuries after accounting for crustal and volcanic components. These first detailed records indicate that East Antarctic lead pollution started in the 13th century coincident with Late Intermediate Period metallurgy in the Andes and was pervasive during the Spanish Colonial period in parallel with large-scale exploitation of Andean silver and other ore deposits. Lead isotopic variations suggest that 19th-century increases in lead, cadmium, and bismuth resulted from Australian lead and Bolivian tin mining emissions, with 20th century pollution largely the result of the latter. As in the Northern Hemisphere, variations in heavy metal pollution coincided with plagues, cultural and technological developments, as well as global economic and political events including the Great Depression and the World Wars. Estimated atmospheric heavy metal emissions from Spanish Colonial-era mining and smelting during the late 16th and early 17th century were comparable to estimated European emissions during the 1st-century apex of the Roman Empire, with atmospheric model simulations suggesting hemispheric-scale toxic heavy metal pollution during the past five centuries as a result.

Eastward across the Western Sea: The Indian Oceanic Trafficking of Africans into China

AbstractDespite its greater extensiveness in comparison to the ferrying of their West African counterparts across the Atlantic Ocean into bondage in the New World, the history of the extraction of East Africans to serve as slaves in the various lands that ring the Indian Ocean is barely known to most of us. Particularly as Westerners, our knowledge of even the sketchiest outlines of the latter phenomenon pales before what we know intimately about the intricacies of the former. Furthermore, unknown altogether to too many is the fact that—from at least as early as the eighth century of the Common Era—these East African slaves were exported as distantly as China. Based principally on the pertinent Chinese sources, this study raises and investigates three fundamental questions concerning this conveyance of East Africans into China. First, who were the original enslavers of these East Africans and thus the prime purveyors of their entrance over the centuries into bondage in China? Second, how—that is, by land or by sea—and under what auspices were these East Africans typically transported from their homelands mainly along the eastern African coastline to a locale as far away as China? Third and finally, what was the probable fate of these East Africans once they had arrived in China? The essay concludes with a consideration of the consequentiality of this largely overlooked and therefore unheralded saga amidst the history of Chinese institutionalised servitude overall.

Luke 9:57–62: Ὁδός to Marcion’s God?

Abstract The first few centuries of the Common Era saw great theological fluidity in emerging Christian doctrine. A figure looming large in many early controversies is Marcion of Pontus. Not considered truly gnostic by modern scholars, Marcion fueled the ire of early Church Fathers—Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Tertullian, and others—by spreading his apparently biblically-based, ditheistic theology of a superior Unknown Good God and an inferior Just Creator God. Additionally, Marcion’s gospel, generally considered a version of canonical Luke, witnesses the three Jesus sayings in Luke 9:57–62 (cf. Tertullian, Adversus Marcionem 4,23,9–11; Clement of Alexandria, Stromata 3,4,25). This article examines these sayings—in light of both ancient and modern commentary—as representing a collective theological way or ὁδός to ideate Marcion’s Unknown Good God. Today Marcion’s voice is faint, but in ancient Christianity it was exceedingly strong. This article attempts to find a hint of its former strength.

Surface climate signals transmitted rapidly to deep North Atlantic throughout last millennium.

Instrumental observations of subsurface ocean warming imply that ocean heat uptake has slowed 20th-century surface warming. We present high-resolution records from subpolar North Atlantic sediments that are consistent with instrumental observations of surface and deep warming/freshening and in addition reconstruct the surface-deep relation of the last 1200 years. Sites from ~1300 meters and deeper suggest an ~0.5 degrees celsius cooling across the Medieval Climate Anomaly to Little Ice Age transition that began ~1350 ± 50 common era (CE), whereas surface records suggest asynchronous cooling onset spanning ~600 years. These data suggest that ocean circulation integrates surface variability that is transmitted rapidly to depth by the Atlantic Meridional Ocean Circulation, implying that the ocean moderated Earth's surface temperature throughout the last millennium as it does today.

Moss kill dates and modeled summer temperature track episodic snowline lowering and ice cap expansion in Arctic Canada through the Common Era

Abstract. Most extant ice caps mantling low-relief Arctic Canada landscapes remained cold based throughout the late Holocene, preserving in situ bryophytes killed as ice expanded across vegetated landscapes. After reaching peak late Holocene dimensions ∼1900 CE, ice caps receded as Arctic summers warmed, exposing entombed vegetation. The calibrated radiocarbon ages of entombed moss collected near ice cap margins (kill dates) define when ice advanced across the site, killing the moss, and remained over the site until the year of their collection. In an earlier study, we reported 94 last millennium radiocarbon dates on in situ dead moss collected at ice cap margins across Baffin Island, Arctic Canada. Tight clustering of those ages indicated an abrupt onset of the Little Ice Age at ∼1240 CE and further expansion at ∼1480 CE coincident with episodes of major explosive volcanism. Here we test the confidence in kill dates as reliable predictors of expanding ice caps by resampling two previously densely sampled ice complexes ∼15 years later after ∼250 m of ice recession. The probability density functions (PDFs) of the more recent series of ages match PDFs of the earlier series but with a larger fraction of early Common Era ages. Post 2005 CE ice recession has exposed relict ice caps that grew during earlier Common Era advances and were preserved beneath later ice cap growth. We compare the 106 kill dates from the two ice complexes with 80 kill dates from 62 other ice caps within 250 km of the two densely sampled ice complexes. The PDFs of kill dates from the 62 other ice caps cluster in the same time windows as those from the two ice complexes alone, with the PDF of all 186 kill dates documenting episodes of widespread ice expansion restricted almost exclusively to 250–450 CE, 850–1000 CE, and a dense early Little Ice Age cluster with peaks at ∼1240 and ∼1480 CE. Ice continued to expand after 1480 CE, reaching maximum dimensions at ∼1880 CE that are still visible as zones of sparse vegetation cover in remotely sensed imagery. Intervals of widespread ice cap expansion coincide with persistent decreases in mean summer surface air temperature for the region in a Community Earth System Model (CESM) fully coupled Common Era simulation, suggesting the primary forcings of the observed snowline lowering were both modest declines in summer insolation and cooling resulting from explosive volcanism, most likely intensified by positive feedbacks from increased snow cover and sea ice and reduced northward heat transport by the oceans. The clusters of ice cap expansion defined by moss kill dates are mirrored in an annually resolved Common Era record of ice cap dimensions in Iceland, suggesting this is a circum-North-Atlantic–Arctic climate signal for the Common Era. During the coldest century of the Common Era, 1780–1880 CE, ice caps mantled >11 000 km2 of north-central Baffin Island, whereas <100 km2 is glaciated at present. The peak Little Ice Age state approached conditions expected during the inception phase of an ice age and was only reversed after 1880 CE by anthropogenic alterations of the planetary energy balance.

High sensitivity of summer temperatures to stratospheric sulfur loading from volcanoes in the Northern Hemisphere

The 540s, 1450s, and 1600s represent three of the five coldest decades in the Common Era (CE). In each of these cases, the cause of these cold pulses has been attributed to large volcanic eruptions. However, the provenance of the eruption and magnitude of the volcanic forcing remains uncertain. Here, we use high-resolution sulfur isotopes in Greenland and Antarctic ice cores measured across these events to provide a means of improving sulfur loading estimates for these eruptions. In each case, the largest reconstructed tree-ring cooling is associated with an extratropical eruption, and the high-altitude stratospheric sulfate loading of these events is substantially smaller than previous estimates (by up to a factor of two). These results suggest an increased sensitivity of the reconstructed Northern Hemisphere summer temperature response to extratropical eruptions. This highlights the importance of climate feedbacks and processes that amplify and prolong the cooling signal from high latitudes, such as changes in sea ice extent and ocean heat content.

Assessment of climate extremes at the regional scale during the last millennium using an annually resolved stalagmite record

In public awareness, extraordinary floods, heat-waves, or drought episodes rank amongst the most tangible indications of a changing climate. Forecasting the magnitude of such extreme events at regional and local scales is a major challenge. Development of reliable small-scale climate models requires testing against past climate records, but these are often incomplete, or cover only partial aspects in a spectrum of environmental parameters, e.g., due to seasonal bias as it is the case for tree-ring records. Here, we study a stalagmite from the “Kleine Teufelshöhle” (KTH) in the Franconian karst (Germany) to obtain independent information on local climate conditions at multi-annual to multi-decadal time scales. Radiocarbon and 230Th/U dating provide constraints for linear growth models, which were then successfully refined by correlating high spatial resolution O isotope data for the KTH stalagmite with a published regional tree-ring width record at annual resolution for the past 1000 years. Besides the availability of the tree-ring record, the KTH site offers the additional advantage that direct comparison between tree-ring and speleothem climate proxies with historical documents is possible due to the proximity of the speleothem and tree-ring sites to the former “Free imperial city” of Nuremberg. Historical documents provide precisely dated records of extreme events, in particular for destructive floods. Higher O isotope values in the stalagmite characterize the “Litte Ice Age" (LIA), an interval coinciding with frequent and devastating floods, sometimes associated with river blockage related to accumulation of ice rafts. Prior to approximately 1500 Common Era (CE), O isotope values were generally lower and only show minor overlap with historical flooding accounts. Conversely, some known drought events for Central Europe as well as the climatic influence of large-volume volcanic eruptions with hemispheric to global impact may be recorded in the speleothem as negative excursions in speleothem O isotopic values. The correlated tree-ring and speleothem data for the first time provide a complementary paleohydrology record that is uniquely suited to resolve extreme short-term climate events at the regional scale.

Caribbean salinity anomalies contributed to variable North Atlantic circulation and climate during the Common Era.

Paleoceanographic reconstructions show that the strength of North Atlantic currents decreased during the Little Ice Age. In contrast, the role of ocean circulation in climate regulation during earlier historical epochs of the Common Era (C.E.) remains unclear. Here, we reconstruct sea surface temperature (SST) and salinity in the Caribbean Basin for the past 1700 years using the isotopic and elemental composition of planktic foraminifera tests. Centennial-scale SST and salinity variations in the Caribbean co-occur with (hydro)climate changes in the Northern Hemisphere and are linked to a North Atlantic SST forcing. Cold phases around 600, 800, and 1400 to 1600 C.E. are characterized by Caribbean salinification and Gulf of Mexico freshening that implies reductions in the strength of North Atlantic surface circulation. We suggest that the associated changes in the meridional salt advection contributed to the historical climate variability of the C.E.

More Frequent Hurricane Passage Across the Bahamian Archipelago During the Little Ice Age

AbstractThe year 2020 Common Era (CE) experienced the highest number of named tropical cyclones in the Atlantic Ocean since 1850 CE, but the short instrumental record makes it challenging to assess if this level of activity is statistically meaningful. Here, we present two near‐annually resolved hurricane reconstructions from sediment archived in two blue holes located only 300 m apart on the northern margin of Grand Bahama. These two blue holes provide a replicated signal of hurricanes passing within a 50–100 km radius over the last 1,800 years, and the long‐term reconstructions document multiple 50‐to‐150‐year intervals when hurricane frequency was significantly higher than it has been over the last 100 years. These two records were first merged into a single stack, and then compiled with five other high‐resolution reconstructions from across the Bahamian Archipelago to form a single 1500‐year record of Bahamian hurricane frequency. This new Bahamian Compilation documents more hurricanes passing ∼75°W from 21°N to 26°N during the Little Ice Age (LIA; 1300–1850 CE) relative to the prior millennium and the last 170 years. The US Eastern Seaboard also experienced heightened hurricane activity during the LIA, whereas the Gulf of Mexico and Southern Caribbean were inactive. This suggests that despite a globally cooler climate, regional climate conditions during the LIA remained favorable for cyclogenesis and intensification along certain Atlantic hurricane pathways. Perhaps heightened Sahel rainfall during the LIA indicates an increase in African Easterly waves, which in turn possibly seeded more tropical cyclones in the Atlantic Main Development Region.

Regime of Strong Holocene Earthquakes of the Kultor Fault Zone in the Northern Issyk-Kul Lake Region (Tien Shan) According to Radiocarbon Dating Data

Morphostructures of the northern slope of the Kungey Ala-Too Range and its southern foothills (adyrs) were studied with use of tectonic geomorphology and paleoseismology methods. Radioisotope (radiocarbon and luminescence) dating data analysis in dug trenches demonstrates the lateral migration of the strong seismic activity along the Kultor Fault zone (northern Issyk-Kul Lake region). It was confirmed that the strong recent seismic activity is concentrated in the adyr zone and located along adyr faults. At least 7 morphogenic earthquakes occurred along the fault zone during Holocene. During common era the reoccurrence of morphogenic earthquakes was 200‒300 years. The strongest seismic catastrophes with М ~ 7.5 (Io = Х) have been apparently occurred in VII and XV centuries along the disjunctive. During this event the seismic sources reached the surface forming the fault scarps with lengths up to 70‒80 km.

Behind gold for pepper: The players and the game of Indo-Mediterranean trade

AbstractThis article offers a fresh approach to the study of ‘Indo-Roman’ trade by defining the ‘players’ of the ‘game’ of Indian Ocean commerce in the early centuries of the Common Era. Numerous specialized personnel hailing from the Mediterranean, Near East, and Indian subcontinent were involved in the movement, processing, and sale of Indian Ocean commodities. Players throughout the ancient world formed principal-agent relationships, corporate structures, and diaspora communities based on shared heritage and profession to facilitate their efforts. These tactics lowered the transaction costs of commerce arising from a combination of factors: the seasonal monsoon winds restricting wind-powered travel; the asymmetry of information for traders operating abroad without a strong support network; and state interventions (e.g. targeted infrastructure projects and tariffs). Certain individuals attained competitive advantages by cooperating with states to regulate the very commerce in which they engaged (e.g. tax-farmers).

The Historical Development of Large‐Scale Paleoclimate Field Reconstructions Over the Common Era

AbstractClimate field reconstructions (CFRs) combine modern observational data with paleoclimatic proxies to estimate climate variables over spatiotemporal grids during time periods when widespread observations of climatic conditions do not exist. The Common Era (CE) has been a period over which many seasonally‐ and annually‐resolved CFRs have been produced on regional to global scales. CFRs over the CE were first produced in the 1970s using dendroclimatic records and linear regression‐based approaches. Since that time, many new CFRs have been produced using a wide range of proxy data sets and reconstruction techniques. We assess the early history of research on CFRs for the CE, which provides context for our review of advances in CFR research over the last two decades. We review efforts to derive gridded hydroclimatic CFRs over continental regions using networks of tree‐ring proxies. We subsequently explore work to produce hemispheric‐ and global‐scale CFRs of surface temperature using multi‐proxy data sets, before specifically reviewing recently‐developed data assimilation techniques and how they have been used to produce simultaneous reconstructions of multiple climatic fields globally. We then review efforts to develop standardized and digitized databases of proxy networks for use in CFR research, before concluding with some thoughts on important next steps for CFR development.

Temperature shifts in Central Antarctica after major volcanic eruptions in the second millennium of the Common Era

Temperature shifts in Central Antarctica after major volcanic eruptions in the second millennium of the Common Era

An Overview of the Past of Animal Domestication

The study aimed to explore the domestication of animals concerning their advantages, disadvantages and history. The article is based on literature survey. Going through the websites of different academic search engines and agencies literatures were deeply analyzed. There are many breeds of few species of domesticated animals. Pople have been using domesticated animals for many purposes like guard, porter, labor, friends, food, fertilizer, as ornament of houses, as income source, for study and research, experimental purposes, biotechnology, improving the variety and beautify the nature. The study also found that most of the domestic animals of today were domesticated from 11,000 years ago. Dogs were domesticated 35,000 years ago, goat, pig, cow, sheep and other cattle were domesticated in 9500 Before Common Era (BCE) and cats in 7500 BCE. Horse was domesticated 5500 years ago, chicken 4000 years ago and insects were domesticated 5000 years ago. Domestication of animal is essential for the conservation of genetic resource too.

PERCEPTION OF INDIA IN CHINA AND GERMANY

Due to the spread of Buddhism and Buddhist culture to the East, Chinese travellers and pilgrims started visiting India in pursuit of Buddhist scriptures and learning of Buddhist philosophy as early as the first half of the first millennium of Common Era. These pilgrims and travellers also left the description of their travel. In the medieval and modern period also Chinese travellers, diplomats and scholars continued their journey towards India. However, the situation and perception both were different in these two periods from previous ancient era. German travellers to India started with the participation of the German soldiers in the British East India Company from the army of the Electorate of Hanover in 1782. The German nationalism grew as a reaction to the political and cultural domination of France and Britain. In their quest to find the roots of their language, they started looking at Sanskrit, Indian philosophy and culture. During the early 19th Century several German Romantics and scholars showed interest in Sanskrit literature. Some of the prominent names among them are Friedrich and August Wilhelm Schlegel, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Max Müller, Alexander and Wilhelm von Humboldt and Johann Gottfried Herder. Friedrich von Schlegel studied Sanskrit for over forty years and in 1808 he published the book Über die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier, wherein he argued that the prototypical “Aryans” founded the ancient European civilizations. With August Wilhelm Schlegel, the first Indology chair was started in the University of Bonn in 1819. Karl August Schlegel, the elder brother of Friedrich and August Wilhelm Schlegel prepared a military survey of southern India for the East India Company which proved very useful.

Paleoenvironmental changes on the central Tibetan Plateau over the last two millennia inferred from sedimentological proxies and brGDGTs in Bamu Co

Understanding multi-centennial climate variations and their impact on lake catchment productivity over the last 2000 years (the Common Era), is crucial for assessing the role of natural climatic factors in driving productivity changes, and for predicting productivity changes under recent global warming scenarios. However, the climate patterns on the Tibetan Plateau (TP), including temperature and hydrological variations, during the Common Era, and their possible links with productivity, are poorly understood. We present a quantitative reconstruction of mean annual air temperature (MAAT), together with grain size and other sedimentary records, from a non-glacial lake sediment archive on the central TP, with the objective of tracking changes in climate and lake catchment productivity over the past two millennia. Our results reveal an overall cooling trend in temperature reconstructed from branched glycerol dialkyl glycerol tetraethers (brGDGTs), with multi-centennial-scale fluctuations superimposed. These fluctuations include relatively warm periods during 200 BCE–400 CE and the Medieval Climate Anomaly (1050–1400 CE), and cold periods centered on ∼500–1000 CE and the Little Ice Age (∼1500–1900 CE). A rapid warming trend since 1900 CE corresponds to the Current Warm Period. The variations in sedimentary grain size reflect lake level changes associated with changes in the summer monsoon. Paleoproductivity inferred from total organic carbon (TOC) shows a similar pattern to the paleoclimate records, suggesting that millennial-scale productivity was influenced by both temperature and the catchment hydrology. In recent decades, human activities exerted a more substantial influence on lake productivity. Additionally, we suggest that the use of brGDGTs for temperature reconstruction necessitates the investigation of the temperature relationship of various fractions of brGDGTs, specifically tetramethyl-brGDGTs; and that careful selection of the temperature calibration equation is needed to minimize inaccuracies in paleotemperature reconstruction.

Anthropomorphism and consumer behaviour: ASPAR‐4‐SLRprotocol compliant hybrid review

AbstractThe notion of ‘anthropomorphism’ has been a subject of intrigue for transdisciplinary academics and scholars for the longest time, as the origin of this concept dates back to the BCE (Before Common Era). Over the past few decades, anthropomorphism literature has been burgeoning in the marketing discipline and its subfields (branding, advertising, consumer behaviour, etc.). This relatively novel stream adopts anthropomorphism as a concept and offers fascinating insights into consumers and their choices, behaviour, and intentions. Although there have been several qualitative review‐based assessments of anthropomorphism within the marketing field, none have been informed by quantitative tools or through a framework‐based approach. Our hybrid variant of systematic review fills this gap by using bibliometric techniques (performance analysis, co‐authorship analysis of countries and authors, and co‐word analysis of keywords) and Theories‐Context‐Characteristics‐Methods (TCCM) framework to show theevolution,trends,and intellectual structure of anthropomorphismin consumer behaviour research. We depict the evolving trajectory and trends over time using a sample of 432 peer‐reviewed journal articles and 27,671 secondary references (between 2005 and 2023) on anthropomorphism in consumer behaviour. Significant results include identifying and describing the most influential authors, articles, journals and countries, different research streams, their development, and future research directions. We also present six knowledge clusters delineating the intellectual knowledge structure of the field. An additional section depicting theories employed, characteristics explored, contexts examined, and methods utilized in the domain have also been presented. Furthermore, we used the TCCM framework to orchestrate possible trajectories for future research. By doing this, we offer academics and practitioners a systematic comprehension of the advancements in the domain and a comprehensive road map for future research.

Obsidian in the Valley of Volcanoes, Peru

The Andagua Valley in the Department of Arequipa of southern Peru has only recently seen systematic archaeological investigations, revealing ancient agricultural communities that, despite apparent geographic isolation, were integrated economically with the wider Andean world. Portable x-ray fluorescence analysis of 137 obsidian artifacts recovered from sites in the lower Andagua Valley identifies the transfer of obsidian from Peru’s three largest sources, with > 90% of the analyzed artifacts coming from the Alca-1 source northwest of the valley. In addition to Alca-1 obsidian, small amounts of obsidian from the distant sources of Chivay and Quispisisa appeared in distinct contexts associated with local pre-Inka occupations, corresponding with the Middle Horizon and Late Intermediate Periods (600 – 1000 and 1000 – 1400 Common Era). Obsidian from the Alca-4 and Alca-5 sources, originating on the adjacent plateau, was also transported to Andagua during these periods, possibly continuing under Inka imperial expansion after 1400 CE.Because there is no archaeological evidence of either Wari or Tiwanaku states in the lower Andagua Valley, the probable mechanisms of obsidian transfer include direct or down-the-line exchange between plateau-based camelid pastoralists and valley farmers. Therefore, at least some long-distance obsidian transfers in southern Peru were carried out without direct oversight from Wari or Tiwanaku, though these transfers may have been facilitated by region-scale economic integration during the Middle Horizon and Late Intermediate Period. Tracing the distribution of obsidian in the Andagua Valley highlights both intra-valley and inter-zonal relationships between the Valley of the Volcanoes and specific areas of the high-elevation Andean plateau while illuminating dynamic economic and social connections along the central Andes in the pre-Hispanic past.

Inter-tree correlation and climatic response of tree-ring δ18O in Chinese fir: Implications for cross-dating and climatic reconstruction in Central East China

The availability of both ancient and modern wood samples enables the Chinese fir (Cunninghamia lanceolata) in Central East China to become a potential tree species for dendroclimatic reconstruction over the Common Era. However, the potential of using tree-ring α-cellulose oxygen isotope ratios (δ18OTRC) in Chinese fir for the purposes of cross-dating and climatic reconstruction remains unexplored. Here we presented three δ18OTRC chronologies (1954–2006 CE) for the whole-ring (δ18OWR), earlywood (δ18OEW), and latewood (δ18OLW) in Chinese fir. The results indicated that the δ18OWR had the highest correlation among individual trees. Using the δ18OWR instead of the conventionally employed TRW can facilitate the cross-dating procedure. The δ18OWR, δ18OEW, and δ18OLW exhibited the strongest relationships with the hydroclimate variables during the entire (June–September), early (June–July), and late (August–September) summer, respectively. The climate conditions preceding the growing season had a stronger influence on δ18OEW than δ18OLW. Using the δ18OWR and δ18OEW to reconstruct the hydroclimate variations may result in greater bias than the use of δ18OLW. Our study demonstrated that the δ18OTRC in Chinese fir from Central East China has the potential for cross-dating and summer hydroclimate reconstruction.

Early Holocene ice on the Begguya plateau (Mt. Hunter, Alaska) revealed by ice core 14C age constraints

Abstract. Investigating North Pacific climate variability during warm intervals prior to the Common Era can improve our understanding of the behavior of ocean–atmosphere teleconnections between low latitudes and the Arctic under future warming scenarios. However, most of the existing ice core records from the Alaskan and Yukon region only allow access to climate information covering the last few centuries. Here we present a surface-to-bedrock age scale for a 210 m long ice core recovered in 2013 from the summit plateau of Begguya (Mt. Hunter; Denali National Park, Central Alaska). Combining dating by annual layer counting with absolute dates from micro-radiocarbon dating, a continuous chronology for the entire ice core archive was established using an ice flow model. Calibrated 14C ages from the deepest section (209.1 m, 7.7 to 9.0 ka cal BP) indicate that basal ice on Begguya is at least of early Holocene origin. A series of samples from a shallower depth interval (199.8 to 206.6 m) were dated with near-uniform 14C ages (3 to 5 ka cal BP). Our results suggest this may be related to an increase in annual net snow accumulation rates over this period following the Northern Hemisphere Holocene Climate Optimum (around 8 to 5 kyr BP). With absolute dates constraining the timescale for the last >8 kyr BP, this paleo-archive will allow future investigations of Holocene climate and the regional evolution of spatial and temporal changes in atmospheric circulation and hydroclimate in the North Pacific.