CHRONOS : STRATIGRAPHIC ANALYSIS, POTTERY SERIATION AND RADIOCARBON DATING IN MEDITERRANEAN CHRONOLOGY JAN DRIESSEN

The absolute chronology of Neopalatial Crete and the early Late Bronze Age Aegean – and, in particular, of the Late Minoan IA Theran Eruption on Santorini, the so-called Minoan Eruption – is a pivotal point for the study of the entire eastern Mediterranean Bronze Age, while at the same time providing one of the most interesting (and intricate) case-studies for combined archaeological and high-precision radiocarbon dating. Since the 1970s, the traditional, archaeology-based chronology has been questioned following the analysis of radiocarbon measurements from Thera and elsewhere in the eastern Mediterranean, while the recent publication of the new annual-resolution section of the calibration curve IntCal20 for the 1700-1500 BCE period has shown that remaining uncertainties aff ect the arguments for both the archaeo-historically-based ´Low´ chronology – with the eruption event in the last decades of the 16th century BCE, and the radiocarbon-based ‘High’ chronology, which sets the eruption in the later part of the 17th century BCE. Focussing on new insights and methods (especially Correspondence Analysis) to achieve a better resolution for the absolute date, this volume originates in an international workshop with the same title organised at Louvain-la-Neuve in December 2022, in which the diff erent approaches were discussed, confronted and explored. The workshop forms part of the ARC 20/25-106 TALOS program: The Santorini Eruption: Comparative anthropological and volcanological research of an archaeological case study.