Archaeology and Near Eastern Absolute Chronology

Absolute chronology assigns calendar dates to historical events and archaeological periods. It offers an irresistible challenge to historians of the Ancient Near East, where king lists and other documents invite a semblance of chronological precision, second only to Dynastic Egypt. Archaeological research is also keenly interested in absolute dates that allow fixed reference points across different cultural zones. However, it is essential that the absolute dates attributed to historical events conform with the archaeological record, and vice versa. This is the one area of Ancient Near Eastern study that requires the closest collaboration between historians and archaeologists.

The longest chronological debate of this type has involved the regnal years of kings belonging to the First Dynasty of Babylon, the so-called High, Middle, and Low Chronology. It was first formulated in 1928, when the Assyriologist S. Langdon and the astronomer J. K. Fotheringham published a compilation of omens relating observations of the appearance of the planet Venus to specific years for Ammisaduqa, the dynasty’s penultimate king. Since this chronology provided a convenient handle on which to hang centuries of historical and archaeological data, it gamely survived all efforts to discredit the reliability of its premises (Neugebauer 1929; Reiner and Pingree 1975), despite eventual disclaimers from some early champions (Smith 1951: 67). The chronological debate was, I believe, conclusively resolved in 1998 only because, for the first time, ceramic typology, stratigraphic analysis, and settlement distribution patterns for mid-second millennium Babylonia were given equal weight with textual data (Gasche et al. 1998). In a second innovative move, the newly proposed chronology was tested against current historical and archaeological dating systems in the rest ofthe Near East, from Iran to Anatolia, modern Turkey, and Egypt (Tanret 2000).

Since this Babylonian chronology ties in with earlier Mesopotamian history, and affords synchronisms with other parts of the Near East and eastern Mediterranean, its resolution is of momentous significance. to this, contemporary civilizations where written documentation is spare or inadequate for historical purposes, but which have a high visibility in the archaeological record, can be dated with more accuracy. They include Minoan Crete and Mycenaean Greece, whose export trade in pottery gives a crucial index for cross-dating archaeological deposits in the Levant, the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea, and Anatolia. Indeed, the overwhelming outside interest in what might seem a parochial detail of Mesopotamian history underscores the tightly knit fabric of most research questions involving the Ancient Near East (for instance Manning 1999, on the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean).

The issue here is that archaeological deposits rarely provide unequivocal absolute dates with the precision needed to pinpoint historical events, that is, to a specific year rather than a generation or a century. Radiocarbon dates and similar chrono-metric techniques involve margins of error ranging well beyond the duration of most Ancient Near Eastern dynasties, let alone the reign of one king. It is not radiocarbon-dating that will determine, for instance, whether Sargon or his grandson Naram-Sin destroyed Early Bronze III Ebla. In any case, the current radiocarbon sample for Mesopotamia proper is too small and too spotty to provide any conclusive assessment, even when conflated with readings from contemporary sites outside Mesopotamia (Reade 2001: 13-14; Hassan and Robinson 1987: 127-8). The fact that samples processed in the early decades of this technology were several hundred years out of line with traditional chronologies no doubt discouraged systematic collecting on the grounds that it was an imperfect (and costly) pastime (Mallowan 1971: 242-3; Reade 2001: 13). It is also likely that reliance on a historically based Mesopotamian chronology made radiocarbon dating seem irrelevant, and suitable only for prehistoric sites, which have no recourse to written benchmarks.

Dendrochronology, or tree-ring dating, is a far more precise tool, but first one must come by the appropriate sample, and it must have at least fifty to one hundred preserved, countable, and well-patterned rings (Kuniholm 2001). Wood of this caliber was especially used as structural timber, or to span monumental buildings. It can be expected for ordinary housing only in forested regions like central Anatolia. Dendrochronology moreover dates the year when a tree was cut, but this need not be the year when it was incorporated into a building or even less the year when that building fell out of use; in short, it offers a terminus post quem. The timbers from Kultepe-Kanesh and Acemhoyiik in central Anatolia provide no more than a series of earliest possible dates (2055, 1832, 1774, and 1761 bce [Kultepe II and Ib periods/ Middle Bronze II A]) for the many generations of Assyrian businessmen who kept records according to the yearly calendar in Assur (Manning et al. 2001). A further cautionary note on how dendrochronology must be evaluated in conjunction with context and associated features is indicated by Acemhclylik. Although its two excavated monumental buildings were used concurrently, their timbers had been felled 152 years apart (OOzguc 1980: 63). Contemporary private housing at Acemhoyiik included twenty-four other timbers dendrodated from four to eight centuries earlier (mid-late third millennium bce!), indicating that informal buildings recycled materials from much older structures (Kuniholm 1996: 331). Still, the ever-expanding database of dendrochronological samples and correlations offers a resource of great promise.

It must also be accepted that archaeological deposits are less discrete than one might wish. Even the well-attested campaigns of Neo-Assyrian kings are difficult to correlate with specific destruction levels at most relevant sites, to say nothing of destructions with weaker credentials, like those attributed to the Biblical patriarchs, or recounted in Near Eastern epics (Forsberg 1995). The factors conspiring to blur the archaeological picture range from human interference (ancient and modern) to the natural processes of erosion, flooding, deposition of soil by rivers, and decomposition. Victorious soldiers stripped buildings of their contents, abandoned houses gradually filled with garbage dumped by their neighbors, moles burrowed through stratified deposits and shifted potsherds, coins, tablets, and similar diagnostic data indiscriminately from one level to another. Identifying these transformations in the field comprises an entire area of archaeological inquiry in itself, and archaeologists have worked out methods to override these confusions (Schiffer 1976). But neither archaeologists nor the archaeological record should be held responsible when their results fall outside the time frames that historians request. An enlightened understanding of each discipline’s methods, limitations, and possibilities can achieve conclusive results, as in the case of dating the Old Babylonian dynasty. Chronological problems require the concerted efforts of archaeologists and historians in equal measure, since the system in use for the Ancient Near East inextricably combines the two.