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The Preface from /Centuries of Darkness/

A superbly fashioned hand-axe or a solid gold Egyptian funerary mask
may work as a picturesque museum-piece, but by itself can actually
tell us very little about the past. Unless we know more exactly
where it was discovered at an archaeological site and what it was
found with - it will remain a curio without a context. Date, of
course, is a crucial aspect of context. One of the first things
anyone wants to know about an ancient find is simply: how old is it?

Despite this, dates in archaeology and history seem to have acquired
a bad name, perhaps not surprisingly, given the generations of
school children forced to digest tedious lists of events with no
apparent logic in their order other than their chronological
sequence. Trainee archaeologists and ancient historians, too, have
to learn basic sets of dates and, having absorbed the information,
put it to the back of their minds. From then on it can be taken for
granted, and chronology, for those eager to press on with the deeper
study of ancient societies, is all too often treated as a necessary
evil. Unfortunately there are also some scholars who, like poor
history teachers, become totally preoccupied with the minutiae of
dating and miss the point of the exercise. These prompted the great
Sir Mortimer Wheeler to write: "we have... been preparing
time-tables; let us now have some trains."

The problem with Wheeler's impatient demand is that timetables in
themselves are not enough; they have to be accurate before the
trains can start running, otherwise you'll miss the connections
between them. In archaeological terms, the cultural interactions of
the ancient world remain a complete jumble unless we have a reliable
time-scale.

When the authors of this book met at the London Institute of
Archaeology in 1985, we discovered a mutual scepticism of the
claimed accuracy for the timetables of Old World archaeology. Above
all, we became increasingly convinced that something was seriously
wrong with the conventional picture of a centuries-long Dark Age
descending over a vast area at the end of the Late Bronze Age c.
1200 BC. With a background of research in many different but related
fields (specifically prehistoric Britain, Minoan Crete, Mycenaean
Greece, biblical archaeology and Pharaonic Nubia), we pooled our
resources and began an in-depth investigation of the archaeological
chronology of the entire ancient Mediterranean and Near East.
Everything we found confirmed our suspicion that the original
spanner in the works was the Egyptian time-scale, and that the
'centuries of darkness' inserted into the histories of so many areas
between 1200 and 700 BC were largely illusory.

Initial questions and conclusions were then circulated in the form
of a discussion paper, published in /Studies in Ancient Chronology
<studies.htm>/ volume 1 (1987)*. *The responses we received from
scholars in fields ranging from Egyptology to astronomy were
immensely encouraging, and the expansion of the project towards an
eventual book followed naturally.

We were now also confident that we had fingered a genuine solution
to the widespread problems. In the meantime a steady stream of new
papers was spontaneously appearing in the archaeological literature,
in which the framework of ancient Mediterranean chronology was
beginning to be laid bare. The feeling is now in the air that it is
time to return to basics and re-examine fundamental assumptions. To
mention only two examples: in 1987, a special international
conference was held at Gothenburg in Sweden under the title of
/High, Middle or Low? /with the aim of resolving the long-standing
uncertainties in the Middle Bronze Age chronology of the Near East
and Aegean; the second concerns the latest issue of the /Bulletin of
the American Schools of Oriental Research /(Spring 1990), which was
entirely devoted to a debate on a major question of biblical
archaeology - which levels of the ancient cities of Palestine belong
to the time of King Solomon, Israel's most famous monarch? Neither
of these prestigious ventures came to a definite conclusion.

But how can there still be such a degree of uncertainty? After all,
scientific methods of dating, such as the radiocarbon technique
which should have resolved the problems, have now been available for
a generation. Despite this, take-up of the new methods has been
surprisingly slow; all too often a dozen or so radiocarbon dates are
included in an archaeological site report merely as scientific
window dressing. This attitude is clearly reflected in a regrettably
common practice: when a radiocarbon date agrees with the
expectations of the excavator it appears in the main text of the
site report; if it is slightly discrepant it is relegated to a
footnote; if it seriously conflicts it is left out altogether.

Lack of understanding of the method by many archaeologists has led
to the submission of large numbers of samples of little or no value
in dating the contexts from which they come. There have also been
problems caused by inconsistent treatment of samples by different
laboratories. As the senior radiocarbon scientist Professor Ingrid
Olsson frankly concluded at the Gothenburg conference: "Honestly, I
would say that I feel that most of the dates from the actual Bronze
Age are dubious. The manner in which they have been made... forces
me to be critical."

Where there have been enough good-quality radiocarbon dates
available, for example in tracing the spread of agriculture across
Europe, the technique has been of immense value. In the Near East
and Aegean, however, the lack of systematic sampling means that
radiocarbon is still too blunt a tool to resolve the perennial
controversies of Bronze to Iron Age chronology. (Relevant
radiocarbon dates are generally discussed here [i.e. in the book] in
the notes to individual areas). It needs to be stressed that the
youngest dates from a given context or cultural phase are really the
most significant. Old, residual material can always be present to
supply misleading dates for a context; the younger dates will more
accurately reflect the time when the deposit was formed and when
most of its assemblage was made. Simply averaging the results for a
phase or context, as is often done, will obviously produce a false
impression of antiquity. On the other hand, we are able to note for
many areas an increasing number of radiocarbon dates which, though
currently treated as anomalous , are consistent with our theory; but
they fall to be decisive because of the general problems affecting
the method and its application. Sadly, for the later part of the
period under review in* *this book, radiocarbon may never be able to
provide meaningful answers (see Appendix 1 [i.e. in the book])*.*

New scientific work in progress holds out interesting prospects for
absolute chronology. Recently, attempts have been made to date the
volcanic explosion which devastated the Minoan colony on the Aegean
island of Thera (towards the beginning of the Late Bronze Age) by
tracing climatic effects in the tree-ring records from California
and Northern Europe and peaks of acidity in ice cores from
Greenland. The difficulty with this is that it is impossible to be
sure whether such effects always originate from volcanic eruptions,
and, if so, which volcano was responsible. As volcanologist David
Pyle (1989, 90) wrote concerning the Thera eruption:

Direct radiocarbon dating has so far yielded a large scatter of
dates that can, at present, be interpreted according to one's
prejudice. Indirect methods (acidity peaks, tree rings) are
beguiling, being potentially more precise but at the same time
highly ambiguous, and should only be treated with the utmost
caution.

The outcome for the absolute dating of Minoan civilization thus
remains uncertain. More definite results may come from the ongoing
development of a tree-ring sequence for ancient Anatolia (Turkey)
and Greece. When complete, the Anatolian dendrochronology will
provide a more precise calibration for Near Eastern radiocarbon
dates. Further, if it can be firmly linked with local Bronze Age
archaeology, we will also have an invaluable control on historical
chronology, including that of Egypt itself, because of the close
connections which existed between the Hittite kings and the pharaohs.

In the meantime, radiocarbon dating is still of little help in
providing answers to the conundrum of Dark Age chronology. In
practice, we have to fall back on traditional methods, primarily
pottery dating. Being virtually indestructible, pottery is found in
vast quantities on ancient sites, and constitutes the
bread-and-butter of archaeologists. Basic typological sequences for
the development of ceramic styles are well established (though the
pigeonholing into minute phases by some experts can be excessive).
Pottery thus enables the strata of a given site to be easily dated
within a local sequence. Discoveries of imported pottery allow links
to be made between the chronologies of different cultures, while
finds of key styles of pottery in those areas with written records
allow the whole framework to be attached to historical dates.

Ancient history has often been compared to a mosaic, a patchwork
built up from tiny scraps of evidence. A jigsaw puzzle is a much
better metaphor, especially when dealing with chronology. For
well-known periods (such as the time of the Roman Empire) the edge
pieces of the puzzle, representing the dating framework, can be set
down with confidence. But before about the 7th century BC the task
is different. The edges of the puzzle, in this case the chronologies
of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, are not as certain as they are
usually thought to be. The major argument of this book is that the
dates conventionally attributed to ancient Egyptian history are
inflated by as much as two and a half centuries. Imagine, then,
trying to complete a jigsaw where the sides are far too long.
Frustratingly, many pieces will appear to fit into two places in the
puzzle, while many 'ghost pieces' will be needed to fill the space
that is unaccounted for.

This is precisely the dilemma into which so many archaeologists have
been forced, dating and redating artefacts backwards and forwards
across the span of the Dark Age, in attempting to fit their evidence
into a framework defined by Egyptian chronology. Stretching the
sides of the time puzzle by raising the dates further would only
make the problems more acute. The only remedy, as our investigation
shows, would seem to be to shorten the sides and compress the
overall scheme.

The idea of a radical shift in the chronology of this period is not
entirely new. At the turn of the century the classical scholar Cecil
Torr and Egyptologist Jens Lieblein stood firm against the newly
established 'high' Egyptian chronology, but their arguments for a
lower dating fell on stony ground. The next challenge to the status
quo came in the 1950s from Immanuel Velikovsky, the wayward polymath
whose work outraged scientists in many fields other than ancient
history. [For a discussion of Velikovsky, catastrophism, and other
chronology viewpoints, see The Society for Interdisciplinary Studies
<http://www.knowledge.co.uk/sis/>.] His model for a 'revised
chronology', based on a new series of links between Egyptian and
Israelite history, proved to be disastrously extreme. Involving a
reduction of Egyptian dates by a full eight centuries at one point,
it produced a rash of new problems far more severe than those it
hoped to solve. Sadly, while he pointed the way to a solution by
challenging Egyptian chronology, Velikovsky understood little of
archaeology and nothing of stratigraphy.

Rocking the boat, of course, has never been popular in any field of
study. Torr went against the grain of contemporary trends, while
Velikovsky was too much of an outsider. But the major problem with
the attempts of these writers was that they were working as
individuals, and realistically could never have tackled the vast
range of material from the many disciplines embroiled in the
argument. Since their time, academic inertia and the convenience of
following long established teachings has discouraged any serious
challenge to the accepted chronology. Further, modern archaeologists
are not immune to the fascination with the sheer antiquity of their
finds in their search for the origins of any given development.

What has been conspicuously lacking is a workable alternative to the
conventional chronology. This volume provides the outlines of a
comprehensive model, covering every major region from the Western
Mediterranean to Iran. Clearly, a colossal amount of work lies ahead
in building new detailed chronologies for individual areas. What is
here is only a beginning, but one which is long overdue. As James
Mellaart wrote in 1979:

Conventional chronologies have served us long enough and not too
well as an interim tool. Most tools need sharpening over the
years and finally replacement.

© P. James /et al/. 1991