Archaeologists Used Cosmic Rays to Illuminate a Secret 7,000-Year-Old Settlement
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Archeologists often use radiocarbon dating or dendrochronology to identify objects and settlements, but these techniques aren’t perfect for every region of the world.
So, to accurately date a 7,000-year-old Greek settlement, scientists from the University of Bern relied on Miyake events—moments of immense cosmic rays in the distant past—to accurately track the growth of this settlement.
Understanding the timeline of this particular settlement could help solve many more archeological mysteries in the southern Balkans.
Sadly for historians and archeologists everywhere, time machines don’t exist. But because of this sad fact, scientists have developed fascinating ways to uncover facts about the prehistoric past. Two of the most well-known methods are radiocarbon dating–which counts how many carbon-14 atoms are in a sample and can accurately pinpoint a date based on the results—and the tree ring-counting approach of dendrochronology.
For decades, these two methods have helped illuminate the prehistoric past in ways previously thought impossible. But even time-tested techniques have their limits—especially in certain parts of the world.
“In Central Europe there is a tree-ring chronology that goes back almost 12,500 years into the past—to the year 10,375 BC. However, this chronology only applies to certain regions. There is no consistent chronology for the Mediterranean region,” University of Bern’s Andrej Maczkowski, said in a press statement. “The accuracy of such classifications is in the best case within the range of decades.”
That’s a problem for Andrej Maczkowski and his team, as their archeological quandary lies at the Dispilio site on Lake Orestida in northern Greece (in what is considered today to be the southern Balkan region). Dendrochronology and radiocarbon dating could supply an approximation, but far from an exact moment in time.
To improve on this estimation, the researchers turned to prehistoric influxes of cosmic rays known as Miyake events, named after the Japanese physicist Fusa Miyake who discovered these events back in 2012. Although they would likely fry our terrestrial electronics if they occurred today, these massive solar flare events have the positive benefit of “lodging” themselves inside trees (by increasing carbon-14 content), so they can serve as important archeological anchor points when dating objects.
However, it wasn’t until 2022 when researchers from ETH Zurich discovered that one such Miyake event occurred in 5259 BCE—a date very close to the establishment of this settlement in northern Greece. By analyzing 787 pieces of timber from the Dispillo archeological site, the University of Bern team established a growth ring chronology spanning around three centuries and ending in 5140 BCE. With this in place, the researchers were able to establish various building phases of the settlement over nearly two centuries, from 5328 and 5140 BCE. The results of this study were published this week in the journal Nature Communications.
This discovery could have big implications for archeological pursuits in the region, and could snowball into other artifacts and settlements being similarly identified.
“We expect that other chronologies for the region from this period can now be linked to the ‘Dispilio Chronology’ in rapid succession,” Maczkowski said in a press statement. “This paves the way to developing a regional dendrochronology for the southern Balkans.”
It’s not a time machine, but it’s the next best thing.
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