Assiros: Stratigraphy and Chronology

(revised 07102014)

The table below was first prepared on the basis of the conventionally accepted chronology for the Mycenaean and Protogeometric periods. Since then results from Dendrochronology and Dendrochronologically related 14C dates for timbers from  construction Phases 9, 6, 3 and 2 as well as 14C dates for seeds from the destruction of the Phase 9 granaries, published between 2003 and 2007, have required a reassessment of many of these dates. These reassessments are indicated in red in the table. These new scientifically-derived absolute dates also suggested that the dates conventionally used for the successive styles of Mycenaean (LH IIIA2 - LH IIIC) and Protogeometric pottery need re-evaluation. Following discussion of the possibility that the timbers had all been reused, a series of animal bones were selected for independent determinations at the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit. The results, now  published in PLoS One (15.10.2014) following Bayesian modelling of all available 14C data, confirm our original assertions that the timbers were freshly cut, not reused, and that the dates, now refined, remain correct.

The PLoS abstract and table of start and end dates for each phase can be found here.

The felling dates of timbers from the Phase 3 destruction show that the construction of the Phase 3 buildings must be set around 1080 BC while felling dates from the Phase 2 destruction show that the construction of the Phase 2 buildings must be set around 1070 BC, only ten years later. The Phase 3 destruction must therefore predate 1070 BC. The fragments of a PG amphora in the Phase 3 destruction level below the Phase 2 floor must come from a vessel manufactured before this date. Since they imitate the Attic PG style, their presence indicates that the start date of Protogeometric from Attica and indeed from the whole of southern Greece must be set before 1070 BC, perhaps by as many as fifty years.  A full report on the Phase 3 and 2 dates has already been published in AEMTH for 2003 (pdf here). See also OLD TREES, NEW DATES and the end of Mycenaean civilization

The felling dates of timbers from the Phase 6 destruction have been determined at c 1270 BC. Since Mycenaean pottery of LH IIIC style, imitating that found in southern Greece, first appears in the use levels of Phase 7, there is a very strong probability that the first appearance of the style in southern Greece should be dated much earlier than conventionally, well before c 1270 BC rather than c 1200 BC. Since Phase 6 is a remodelling of the previous Phase 7 it was at first presumed that the timbers date the construction of Phase 7 rather than that of Phase 6 but the new dates determined from the animal bones rule out this possibility. See also OLD TREES, NEW DATES and the trojan war

The felling dates for the timbers from the Phase 9 destruction presumably date the construction of the granaries of that Phase and have been determined to be c 1360 BC. They give, however, no information about the duration of that phase before the granaries were destroyed by fire. The determinations for a series of samples of seeds, which can only have been harvested very shortly before the fire, and of bones from this and the succeeding phase, both confirm that the destruction fire took place very soon after this date. Mycenaean pottery of LH IIIA2 style or of very the beginning of the LH IIIB style which would normally be dated around 1300 BC was found in the Phase 9 strata. Although this date for the start of LH IIIB is more than 60 years earlier thsn conventionally accepted, it is a similar offset to that for the start of LH IIIC (as above) and allows around 100 years from the duration of the LH IIIB period. It also matches the offset determined for the LH I and Late Minoan IIA by around 100 years on the basis of the absolute dates proposed for the Thera eruption in the southern Aegean.

'Conventional' dates in this table are based on pottery imported from Southern Greece - Mycenaean (LH), Protogeometric (PG) or Geometric (LG) as set out in the discussion in AEMTH 10, 447-449.

Tabulation of Mycenaean and Assiros dates

The Dark Ages in Northern Greece

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