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MN (Currently in WY)

I have been doing some research on the end of the Bronze Age and early Iron Age for some of my own projects.

In my research, I came across this interesting video about the famous "Bronze Age Collapse".




His essential thesis is a mix of Natural Disaster and Warfare that leads to the collapse of the international trade routes that was the life lines of the Bronze Age Palace Economies. Lot's of great pictures too.

Enjoy.

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Just wrote an essay about this subject last month. It was on the continuity/discontinuity at Mycenaean palatial sites (focus being on Tiryns) after the LHIIIb collapse. Used Cline's publication on the Bronze Age collapse as a source.

It really is a fascinating period, with what appears to have been some sort of massive arms race and lots of conflict between different palaces (although precise ideas of what exactly caused the collapse of the palatial system continue to elude us).

Btw, if you are interested, I could recommend you some literature. Also, if you'd like, I could get you some PDFs from the university library. I have downloaded most of the little that was available in digital format (including Cline's treatise) to use in my essay, since usually I am too lazy to go to the library to actually borrow physical books (although for this essay, I really had to).

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/05/26 00:15:09


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If that is an open offer Iron Captain, I am interested.

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It is. I'll be compiling what I have over the weekend. If anyone is interested, send me a PM and I'll share.

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Adrift within the vortex of my imagination.

Some vulcanologists are now theorizing that the Thera volcano was much larger than originally thought.

n'oublie jamais - It appears I now have to highlight this again.

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 Orlanth wrote:
Some vulcanologists are now theorizing that the Thera volcano was much larger than originally thought.


Volcanic eruptions was one thing. the other factors that often overlooked was that the Imperial Government systems of three mediterranean superpowers at that time... Egypt, Mycenean (Proto greeks? but it is said that classical greeks came from what's now Austria and Hungary and more or less related to either slavs or germans), and Hittites (Troy was within Hattusa sphere of influence) had strained their planned economy to its limits. (where peasants farm to feed the entirety of the Kingdom/Empire. Lowest in the society, while others in the society does not farm nor known how to do agriculture properly.. Not sure if the concepts of private property exists back then). Farmers were told to farm WITHIN a number of landmasses allocated by the Imperial government. and so irrigation belongs to the state .. What else could these peasants be motivated to farm other than they're bossed around by armed enforcers.

And The Jewish Exodus (out of Egypt). when did it likely to happen? Bronze Age or Iron Age?



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South Wales

I vaguely remember a month or so ago... didn't Wargames Illustrated have an article on this too? Someone was looking at running a form of campaign where you manage one of the many civilisations that went belly up with battles during year turns or something.

And after going to look, yes indeed issue 367 of May 2018 has an article on it.

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Fort Campbell

Check out "1177 B.C. The Year Civilization Collapsed."

A couple years ago I wrote on this topic in my Greek History class. I focused on the climate impacts that helped to drive this collapse.

It's a fascinating topic, that we're just starting to learn more and more on.

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Lincoln, UK

I'm with DJones520 - I read the book as part of a failed Bronze Age gaming project, it's really excellent. Thanks for the video. Turns out that the Sea People "invaders" were often already known to, and employed by, the civilisations of the time.

The Osprey book on the Sea Peoples is only a year or two old and really good (actually, the Ospreys on the Palace System and Troy are also worth a read).

It's a fascinating period. Turns out the iron dagger from King Tut's tomb was meteoric, rather than smelted. There's a gap of a couple of hundred years between that dagger and the first evidence of smelting, so it was a bit of a mystery when I studied archaeology way back in the 80s.

If you ever get a chance, get out there to see the ruins on Crete. Knossos is amazing. Always wanted to visit Santorini/Thera

Just to throw something really weird into the mix (especially if you're a Westworld fan). The author of the bicameral mind theory (the idea that the right brain telling the left brain what to do was actually heard as the voices of gods and ancestors for a while) has the series of invasions and catastrophes in the 2nd Millennium BC as the main cause of the breakdown of that mental structure and the rise of true consciousness (or maybe that should be "true" "consciousness").

This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2018/05/26 23:06:20


 
   
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MN (Currently in WY)

 djones520 wrote:
Check out "1177 B.C. The Year Civilization Collapsed."

A couple years ago I wrote on this topic in my Greek History class. I focused on the climate impacts that helped to drive this collapse.

It's a fascinating topic, that we're just starting to learn more and more on.


The linked video is a lecture the writer of the book provided.

Regarding the Volcano, he states at the end that the timeframe for the Theros(sp) volcanic explosion has been pushed back, making it less likely that the volcanic eruption had anything to do with the Bronze Age collapse.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/05/29 15:04:58


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Extra History did a series of YouTube videos on this subject as well. https://youtu.be/KkMP328eU5Q?list=PLhyKYa0YJ_5ABU4r0U2Mcj_Gj32UN80zX

   
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MN (Currently in WY)

Thanks for sharing that.

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Fort Campbell

 Easy E wrote:
 djones520 wrote:
Check out "1177 B.C. The Year Civilization Collapsed."

A couple years ago I wrote on this topic in my Greek History class. I focused on the climate impacts that helped to drive this collapse.

It's a fascinating topic, that we're just starting to learn more and more on.


The linked video is a lecture the writer of the book provided.

Regarding the Volcano, he states at the end that the timeframe for the Theros(sp) volcanic explosion has been pushed back, making it less likely that the volcanic eruption had anything to do with the Bronze Age collapse.


The Eruption itself probably didn't have a lot, but there is pretty widespread evidence across all of Europe of a cooling period. It's what likely caused the droughts that led to widespread famine in the run up to the collapse.

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Glasgow

Eric's book is solid and he's a lovely guy to boot. I work on the Early and Middle Bronze, and then skip to the middle of the Iron Age so I'm not as expert on the Late Bronze collapse as I could be but I've taught a bit of it. Cyprian Broodbank's The Making of the Middle Sea is a great introduction to the Eastern Med Bronze Age as a whole and is worth a look and gives a longer scale view of the social changes that eventually ended in the collapse, as well as the rise of the classical states, if folks are interested.




Automatically Appended Next Post:
 Lone Cat wrote:

And The Jewish Exodus (out of Egypt). when did it likely to happen? Bronze Age or Iron Age?



It almost certainly didn't*, but the biblical narrative would put it in the Bronze Age.

*some people used to think the Habiru mentioned in second millennium correspondence between Egypt and Canaan were a semitic group that could be associated with the Hebrews, but this has lost traction in the literature. There is no extra-biblical evidence of The Exodus.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2018/05/29 21:32:02


 
   
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nfe wrote:
It almost certainly didn't*, but the biblical narrative would put it in the Bronze Age.

*some people used to think the Habiru mentioned in second millennium correspondence between Egypt and Canaan were a semitic group that could be associated with the Hebrews, but this has lost traction in the literature. There is no extra-biblical evidence of The Exodus.


To expand on this, a lot of Biblical Criticism today generally purports that the Exodus narrative was a national origin narrative built in the wake of the Babylonian Exile, which is basically the first point in time where Biblical history meets up and starts to roughly correspond to extra-Biblical History. The modern Bible/Talmud as we know it was all written in the Exilic era (the oral tradition is older, and there may have been extant texts at the time that do not remain with us) and this has led to a commonly held conclusion that the Egyptian Exile was actually about the Babylonian Captivity, but obvious the storytellers replaced the Babylonians with the Egyptians to avoid being punished for telling stories about how some random Jew and his god showed the Babylonians and Marduk who was boss et cetera.

   
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 LordofHats wrote:
nfe wrote:
It almost certainly didn't*, but the biblical narrative would put it in the Bronze Age.

*some people used to think the Habiru mentioned in second millennium correspondence between Egypt and Canaan were a semitic group that could be associated with the Hebrews, but this has lost traction in the literature. There is no extra-biblical evidence of The Exodus.


To expand on this, a lot of Biblical Criticism today generally purports that the Exodus narrative was a national origin narrative built in the wake of the Babylonian Exile, which is basically the first point in time where Biblical history meets up and starts to roughly correspond to extra-Biblical History. The modern Bible/Talmud as we know it was all written in the Exilic era (the oral tradition is older, and there may have been extant texts at the time that do not remain with us) and this has led to a commonly held conclusion that the Egyptian Exile was actually about the Babylonian Captivity, but obvious the storytellers replaced the Babylonians with the Egyptians to avoid being punished for telling stories about how some random Jew and his god showed the Babylonians and
Marduk who was boss et cetera.


Actually, I disagree with quite a bit in here. The dominant interpretation is that the Exodus is a exilic narrative, yes, but there is a lot of historical material in Kings and Chronicles, for instance, albeit with heavy political and theological alteration. King lists, major building projects, and invasions are all attested beyond the biblical texts. I am the surveyor at Tel Azekah, which was sacked in Sennacherib’s invasion of the Shephelah in 701BCE and recorded in 2 Kings during the time of Hezekiah. Some will argue for earlier corroboration, usually pointing to the Tel Dan or Merneptah stelae due to mentions of Israel and a House of David, but this is not so well-accepted (and lots of us reject the idea of a King David entirely, but that’s not a majority view at the moment).

The minimalist position of the revisionists like Philip Davies that place the bulk of the creation of the Hebrew Bible in the exilic, post-exilic, or even Hellenistic periods are really a minority view, and most biblical historians and archaeologists agree that considerable portions were in place by the time of Josiah.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/05/29 22:38:08


 
   
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nfe wrote:


Actually, I disagree with quite a bit in here. The dominant interpretation is that the Exodus is a exilic narrative, yes, but there is a lot of historical material in Kings and Chronicles, for instance, albeit with heavy political and theological alteration. King lists, major building projects, and invasions are all attested beyond the biblical texts. I am the surveyor at Tel Azekah, for instance, which was sacked in Sennacherib’s invasion of the Shephelah in 701BCE and recorded in 2 Kings during the time of Hezekiah. Some will argue for earlier corroboration, usially pointing to the Tel Dan or Merneptah stelae (due to mentions of Israel and a House of David, but this is not so well-accepted (and lots of us reject the idea of a King David entirely, but that’s not a majority view at the moment).

The minimalist position of the revisionists like Philip Davies that place the bulk of the creation of the Hebrew Bible in the exilic, post-exilic, or even Hellenistic periods are really a minority view, and most biblical historians and archaeologists agree that considerable portions were in place by the time of Josiah.


I don't think the claim is that nothing before the Babylonian Exile happened, but rather that the Biblical version of events is extremely spotty prior to the Babylonian. The Bible spends a lot of time on the Exodus, conquest of Canaan, and the early periods of Israel (the Judges, David, and Solomon) and for a lot of the information there's either obvious embellishment of events or events that seem contradictory with outside sources. One of the big examples I know of is that there's no evidence for a kingdom as prosperous as the one ruled by David in the archeological record, but that's just stuff I'm aware of. You seem knowledgeable about the archeology (all I have is Biblical commentaries, which are usually literary focused with only occasional references to archeological finds) so I'd bet you definitely know more about the physical evidence than me. I did read about the Merneptah Stelae, and I agree that it's part of the spottiness but yeah. I'm willing to bet there was definitely a David at some point in time cause I don't think the big points of the history are simply made up, but the details of it I think can't really be accepted at face value.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2018/05/29 22:41:52


   
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Glasgow

 LordofHats wrote:
nfe wrote:


Actually, I disagree with quite a bit in here. The dominant interpretation is that the Exodus is a exilic narrative, yes, but there is a lot of historical material in Kings and Chronicles, for instance, albeit with heavy political and theological alteration. King lists, major building projects, and invasions are all attested beyond the biblical texts. I am the surveyor at Tel Azekah, for instance, which was sacked in Sennacherib’s invasion of the Shephelah in 701BCE and recorded in 2 Kings during the time of Hezekiah. Some will argue for earlier corroboration, usially pointing to the Tel Dan or Merneptah stelae (due to mentions of Israel and a House of David, but this is not so well-accepted (and lots of us reject the idea of a King David entirely, but that’s not a majority view at the moment).

The minimalist position of the revisionists like Philip Davies that place the bulk of the creation of the Hebrew Bible in the exilic, post-exilic, or even Hellenistic periods are really a minority view, and most biblical historians and archaeologists agree that considerable portions were in place by the time of Josiah.


I don't think the claim is that nothing before the Babylonian Exile happened, but rather that the Biblical version of events is extremely spotty prior to the Babylonian. The Bible spends a lot of time on the Exodus, conquest of Canaan, and the early periods of Israel (the Judges, David, and Solomon) and for a lot of the information there's either obvious embellishment of events or events that seem contradictory with outside sources. One of the big examples I know of is that there's no evidence for a kingdom as prosperous as the one ruled by David in the archeological record, but that's just stuff I'm aware of. You seem knowledgeable about the archeology (all I have is Biblical commentaries, which are usually literary focused with only occasional references to archeological finds) so I'd bet you definitely know more about the physical evidence than me. I did read about the Merneptah Stelae, and I agree that it's part of the spottiness but yeah. I'm willing to bet there was definitely a David at some point in time cause I don't think the big points of the history are simply made up, but the details of it I think can't really be accepted at face value.


Interpretations vary. To pick the big names, they range from Dever and Garfinkel, who put considerable faith in the biblical authors, through Finkelstein, who pretty mich thinks David and Solomon are more akin to Romulus and King Arthur than real historical figures but that most of Kings onwards is useful, to Davies, who thinks the historical Israel is a complete invention.

Importantly, and nost pertinent to this thread, is that pretty much no one without confessional motivations believes in the pre-United Monarchy narratives, which cover the period during which the Eastern Med was undergoing massive social upheaval, but during which people are still writing plenty, and Canaan was a major player. Had the exodus and the annihilation of Canaan recorded in Joshua through Judges happened, it would be very surprising that we have no other evidence of it.
   
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Reaching back to like Freshmen year when I actually heard about some of those names. I thought Davies came off as a bit of a loony right along with the guy who completely rearranged Egyptian history to try and make it conform with the Biblical history whose name I'm completely blanking on at the moment.

Finkelstein is the only one where I've read more than one of his books because I find his method and conclusions convincing.

   
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Glasgow

 LordofHats wrote:
Reaching back to like Freshmen year when I actually heard about some of those names. I thought Davies came off as a bit of a loony right along with the guy who completely rearranged Egyptian history to try and make it conform with the Biblical history whose name I'm completely blanking on at the moment.


Ahmed Osman? Said that Akhenaten was Moses? Is bonkers?

Finkelstein is the only one where I've read more than one of his books because I find his method and conclusions convincing.


He’s a good egg is Israel, for sure. He’s also very funny.
   
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nfe wrote:


Ahmed Osman? Said that Akhenaten was Moses? Is bonkers?


Not the guy I'm thinking of. The name is unfamiliar. I have heard that theory before but I've never been under the impression it was a very popular one and it does seem bonkers to me XD

   
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Adrift within the vortex of my imagination.

I have problems agreeing to a date for the Bronze Age collapse. There was no modern network, failure took time to compound.

You can wreck the global economy quickly now, but less quickly then, economic collapse can only travel as fast as the trade ships do (or not) and likely this will take a long cycle.

While Bronze age powers were fairly wired everything was on the slowdiown and I do not believe the collapse could happen in as single year, a generation, yes, a decade, possibly, but not a year.

The only pivotal singular event will be the Thera eruption, which will effect the entire region immediately and with longer term consequences.

All the other problems, trade route collapse, hyperinflation, large scale crop failure, Sea Peoples incursions, civic unrest etc took their own time, and many are interdependent over time in sequence.




Automatically Appended Next Post:
nfe wrote:
 LordofHats wrote:
Reaching back to like Freshmen year when I actually heard about some of those names. I thought Davies came off as a bit of a loony right along with the guy who completely rearranged Egyptian history to try and make it conform with the Biblical history whose name I'm completely blanking on at the moment.


Ahmed Osman? Said that Akhenaten was Moses? Is bonkers?


Akhenaten's religious reforms might have been an attempt to replicate Judaism within Egypt.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/05/30 09:42:24


n'oublie jamais - It appears I now have to highlight this again.

It is by tea alone I set my mind in motion. By the juice of the brew my thoughts aquire speed, my mind becomes strained, the strain becomes a warning. It is by tea alone I set my mind in motion. 
   
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 Orlanth wrote:


Automatically Appended Next Post:
nfe wrote:
 LordofHats wrote:
Reaching back to like Freshmen year when I actually heard about some of those names. I thought Davies came off as a bit of a loony right along with the guy who completely rearranged Egyptian history to try and make it conform with the Biblical history whose name I'm completely blanking on at the moment.


Ahmed Osman? Said that Akhenaten was Moses? Is bonkers?


Akhenaten's religious reforms might have been an attempt to replicate Judaism within Egypt.


There is no evidence of this. Some scholars suggested that Moses may have been inspired by/exposed to Akenaten’s reforms in the mid-20th century but it has been thoroughly debunked (suggesting Akhenaten was inspired by Judaism is extremely anachronistic as Judaism didn’t exist yet). It is rooted in severe misunderstandings of both those reforms and of early Yahweh-worship. Mostly it was a conclusion made on the basis that both were monotheistic amidst universal polytheism, but neither were monotheistic.
   
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MN (Currently in WY)

 Orlanth wrote:
I have problems agreeing to a date for the Bronze Age collapse. There was no modern network, failure took time to compound.

You can wreck the global economy quickly now, but less quickly then, economic collapse can only travel as fast as the trade ships do (or not) and likely this will take a long cycle.

While Bronze age powers were fairly wired everything was on the slowdiown and I do not believe the collapse could happen in as single year, a generation, yes, a decade, possibly, but not a year.

The only pivotal singular event will be the Thera eruption, which will effect the entire region immediately and with longer term consequences.

All the other problems, trade route collapse, hyperinflation, large scale crop failure, Sea Peoples incursions, civic unrest etc took their own time, and many are interdependent over time in sequence.



The discussion in the initial video is in agreement with this, and uses the 1177BCE (or 1186 BCE) as more of a placeholder/sign-post for when you should be looking for things to be going bad. He uses the date we use for the End of Rome as an example. It is not a "true" date in any sense but more of a signpost on the road of history.



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Okay, guys, I took some extra time and got the entire Oxford Handbook of the Bronze Age Aegean. That is a lot of articles.
Said handbook is meant to serve as an introduction to archaeologists looking to do work or improve their knowledge in this field. It contains a series of articles, written by the leading experts (including one of my teachers) on the Bronze Age Aegean (going to just call it Helladic Periods from now on). It covers a wide variety of subjects relating to the Helladic periods and the Minoan and Mycenaean civilisations, everything from chronology to burials to religion to trade with Egypt to events like the Trojan War and the Mycenaean collapse (It also has a few articles on areas outside of the Aegean). They are separate articles, so you can just read the ones about the subjects you are interested in, or you can read all of it and become super knowledgeable about the subject. It also serves as a good foundation if you are interested in the period and want to do more (scientific) reading. Be warned though, these articles were written for archaeologists, so it may take a bit of getting used to if you only read stuff written by historians and are not used to reading archaeological works. It is written quite clearly though, so there shouldn't be too much confusing terminology and such, and it contains a list of abbreviations and an article explaining the methodology and terminology used in the field for additional clarification.

I am just going to drop a link here, which I think is actually more handy than writing a bunch of PMs:

- Link removed - please don't post links to pirated material -.

You can read everything through this link (just double click on the Oxford Handbook folder, and then on the article you want to read). If you want to, you can also download everything (press download as zip in the upper right, then use your browser to download, unless you want to use the Mega app (it is handy!)).

There is also two additional articles I had left lying around from when I used them for my essay, and I plan to update the folder with some additional stuff over the next few weeks. Do check back!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
 Easy E wrote:
 Orlanth wrote:
I have problems agreeing to a date for the Bronze Age collapse. There was no modern network, failure took time to compound.

You can wreck the global economy quickly now, but less quickly then, economic collapse can only travel as fast as the trade ships do (or not) and likely this will take a long cycle.

While Bronze age powers were fairly wired everything was on the slowdiown and I do not believe the collapse could happen in as single year, a generation, yes, a decade, possibly, but not a year.

The only pivotal singular event will be the Thera eruption, which will effect the entire region immediately and with longer term consequences.

All the other problems, trade route collapse, hyperinflation, large scale crop failure, Sea Peoples incursions, civic unrest etc took their own time, and many are interdependent over time in sequence.



The discussion in the initial video is in agreement with this, and uses the 1177BCE (or 1186 BCE) as more of a placeholder/sign-post for when you should be looking for things to be going bad. He uses the date we use for the End of Rome as an example. It is not a "true" date in any sense but more of a signpost on the road of history.



Exact dates in archaeology should usually be taken with a big pile of salt.
Unless it is very recent archaeology establishing an exact date or year that something happened is difficult and sometimes impossible. Generally, archaeologists will give period ranges rather than exact dates. The farther back you go generally the larger these ranges get. For example, the Bronze Age collapse on mainland Greece happened in LHIIIB (Late Helladic period III, B), which is somewhere around 1300-1190 BC. Cline, when he uses the year 1177, is doing so for dramatic effect (it produces a nice headline for your writing to get noticed) rather than meaning to say: It happened in exactly this year. He just picked a nice sounding year that lies in the approximate range during which the collapse occured.


-edited by insaniak

This message was edited 5 times. Last update was at 2018/10/17 19:49:51


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Cheers for the link mate, that's my train reading sorted for a while.

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 Iron_Captain wrote:

Exact dates in archaeology should usually be taken with a big pile of salt.
Unless it is very recent archaeology establishing an exact date or year that something happened is difficult and sometimes impossible. Generally, archaeologists will give period ranges rather than exact dates. The farther back you go generally the larger these ranges get. For example, the Bronze Age collapse on mainland Greece happened in LHIIIB (Late Helladic period III, B), which is somewhere around 1300-1190 BC. Cline, when he uses the year 1177, is doing so for dramatic effect (it produces a nice headline for your writing to get noticed) rather than meaning to say: It happened in exactly this year. He just picked a nice sounding year that lies in the approximate range during which the collapse occured.


Not sure I agree here. Usually when we give precise dates we do so on solid evidence. In Middle Bronze Anatolia, for example, we can put exact years on loads of events. We can do the same thing in Iron Age Israel. Sure it requires the incorproration of historical texts and is not purely drawn from archaeological data, but any archaeologist who isn’t an interdisciplinary researcher is a bad archaeologist.

Sure, enquire as to where the date came from, but if someone is using an exact date in a peer-reviewed work, there’s probably a very good reason.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2018/05/31 07:37:04


 
   
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nfe wrote:
 Iron_Captain wrote:

Exact dates in archaeology should usually be taken with a big pile of salt.
Unless it is very recent archaeology establishing an exact date or year that something happened is difficult and sometimes impossible. Generally, archaeologists will give period ranges rather than exact dates. The farther back you go generally the larger these ranges get. For example, the Bronze Age collapse on mainland Greece happened in LHIIIB (Late Helladic period III, B), which is somewhere around 1300-1190 BC. Cline, when he uses the year 1177, is doing so for dramatic effect (it produces a nice headline for your writing to get noticed) rather than meaning to say: It happened in exactly this year. He just picked a nice sounding year that lies in the approximate range during which the collapse occured.


Not sure I agree here. Usually when we give precise dates we do so on solid evidence. In Middle Bronze Anatolia, for example, we can put exact years on loads of events. We can do the same thing in Iron Age Israel. Sure it requires the incorproration of historical texts and is not purely drawn from archaeological data, but any archaeologist who isn’t an interdisciplinary researcher is a bad archaeologist.

Sure, enquire as to where the date came from, but if someone is using an exact date in a peer-reviewed work, there’s probably a very good reason.


I disagree. The dating methods we use as archaeologists can not produce exact years (and as I was told in my very first lecture on dating, the obsession with wanting an exact year should be dropped anyway, since it is very trivial).
We can date using either historical records, which are inherently unreliable (due to issues such as lack of context, interpretation, potential biases etc.) and can not be independently verified. Therefore, dates derived in such a manner, while useful to provide a frame of reference, can not stand up to scientific scrutiny.
Of course, we also have scientific dating methods, and they are incredibly important as they transformed archaeology from antiquarianism into a scientific discipline. But, scientific dating methods such as radiocarbon and dendrochronology also always have an inherent element of uncertainty, which is why they produce date ranges and not exact years.
Plenty of people use exact dates in their writing, but as I said, that should be taken with salt. It is virtually impossible to proof an exact year something happened in a rigorous, scientific manner. Sure, we can use dates based on historical records, but that is what historians do, but that is not a scientific discipline. Which does not mean that is not useful, but it does mean that there is no certainty. There is no such thing as 'solid evidence' for exact dates.
So, if someone uses an exact year in a peer-reviewed work, then he/she is probably doing so for a good reason, but he/she is either writing about more recent history or the reason is something else than "I know for certain it happened exactly in this year". Like Cline for example, who uses 1177BC despite the fact that the Bronze Age collapse did not happen in precisely that year, but rather as a general indicator of 'it happened roughly around this time'. An archaeologist who claims to know with certainty the exact date of any event in the Bronze Age is a bad archaeologist. Luckily, I have never met any who claimed such things. I'd say we are pretty well aware of the limitations of dates.

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 Iron_Captain wrote:
nfe wrote:
 Iron_Captain wrote:

Exact dates in archaeology should usually be taken with a big pile of salt.
Unless it is very recent archaeology establishing an exact date or year that something happened is difficult and sometimes impossible. Generally, archaeologists will give period ranges rather than exact dates. The farther back you go generally the larger these ranges get. For example, the Bronze Age collapse on mainland Greece happened in LHIIIB (Late Helladic period III, B), which is somewhere around 1300-1190 BC. Cline, when he uses the year 1177, is doing so for dramatic effect (it produces a nice headline for your writing to get noticed) rather than meaning to say: It happened in exactly this year. He just picked a nice sounding year that lies in the approximate range during which the collapse occured.


Not sure I agree here. Usually when we give precise dates we do so on solid evidence. In Middle Bronze Anatolia, for example, we can put exact years on loads of events. We can do the same thing in Iron Age Israel. Sure it requires the incorproration of historical texts and is not purely drawn from archaeological data, but any archaeologist who isn’t an interdisciplinary researcher is a bad archaeologist.

Sure, enquire as to where the date came from, but if someone is using an exact date in a peer-reviewed work, there’s probably a very good reason.


I disagree. The dating methods we use as archaeologists can not produce exact years (and as I was told in my very first lecture on dating, the obsession with wanting an exact year should be dropped anyway, since it is very trivial).
We can date using either historical records, which are inherently unreliable (due to issues such as lack of context, interpretation, potential biases etc.) and can not be independently verified. Therefore, dates derived in such a manner, while useful to provide a frame of reference, can not stand up to scientific scrutiny.
Of course, we also have scientific dating methods, and they are incredibly important as they transformed archaeology from antiquarianism into a scientific discipline. But, scientific dating methods such as radiocarbon and dendrochronology also always have an inherent element of uncertainty, which is why they produce date ranges and not exact years.
Plenty of people use exact dates in their writing, but as I said, that should be taken with salt. It is virtually impossible to proof an exact year something happened in a rigorous, scientific manner. Sure, we can use dates based on historical records, but that is what historians do, but that is not a scientific discipline. Which does not mean that is not useful, but it does mean that there is no certainty. There is no such thing as 'solid evidence' for exact dates.
So, if someone uses an exact year in a peer-reviewed work, then he/she is probably doing so for a good reason, but he/she is either writing about more recent history or the reason is something else than "I know for certain it happened exactly in this year". Like Cline for example, who uses 1177BC despite the fact that the Bronze Age collapse did not happen in precisely that year, but rather as a general indicator of 'it happened roughly around this time'. An archaeologist who claims to know with certainty the exact date of any event in the Bronze Age is a bad archaeologist. Luckily, I have never met any who claimed such things. I'd say we are pretty well aware of the limitations of dates.


With all due respect, I don't think you're sufficiently expert in the periods I gave as examples. We are precise in Middle Bronze Age Anatolia because we can use the 24,000+ texts in association with the archaeological data to put extremely tight ranges (to the point of a few years at worst) to, for instance, the destructions of Kültepe Lower Town phases II and Ib in in early second millennium BCE. Similarly, we can date destruction layers of several of southern Israel's tells during Sennacherib's invasion of Shephelah to exactly 701 BCE through the corroboration of a range of historical accounts alongside the material sealed by the destruction horizons. You are entirely correct that C14 gives ranges and that dendro, whilst giving exact years for the cutting down of a tree (provided we're working in areas with sufficiently robust master sequences), does not give us a positive date for the use or reuse of its timber in a structure, but to say that there is no situation where archaeologists, with sufficient interdisciplinary evidentiary bases, can use precise is to be unfamiliar with the evidence. To be so bold as to claim that anyone who does is a bad archaeologist is to dismiss, for instance, every leading figure in Anatolian Bronze Age and Levantine Iron Age archaeology. Ask your lecturers if they think, for instance, that Fikri Kulakoğlu or Israel Finkelstein are bad archaeologists, or whether Nicholas Postgate and Mogens Trolle Larsen are bad Assyriologists.


EDIT: I should add the caveat that obviously should some paradigm shifting discovery appear, that exact dates posited with confidence are subject to change, but that does not undermine their use. That's just the nature of all scientific enquiry.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2018/05/31 12:40:26


 
   
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I think you are arguing at cross purposes. Iron Captain is clearly talking of the limits on Archaeology by itself, whilst you are talking about the cross discipline of that with History.

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