Greek Bronze Age ended 100 years earlier than thought

While historical chronologies traditionally place the end of the Greek Bronze Age at around 1025 BC, latest research suggests a date 70 to 100 years earlier.

Archaeologists from University of Birmingham selected 60 samples of animal bones, plant remains and building timbers, excavated at Assiros in northern Greece.

These were then radiocarbon dated and correlated with 95.4 percent accuracy using

Bayesian statistical methodology at University of Oxford and the Akademie der Wissenschaften Heidelberg, Germany.

These new results tell a story that is totally independent of and rather different from the conventional historical accounts of the date of the end of the Greek Bronze Age.

Until recently, the chronology of the later part of the Greek Bronze Age was entirely based on historical dates derived from Egypt and the Near East with the aid of exported or imported objects such as Minoan or Mycenaean pottery or Egyptian scarabs.

"But if we accept the 14C radiocarbon dating, we have to rethink our understanding of a long sequence of dates from the middle of the 14th century BC to the beginning of the 11th century BC," said Ken Wardle from University of Birmingham.

This is a fundamental reassessment and is important not just for Greece but in the wider Mediterranean context.

"It affects the ways in which we understand the relationships between different areas, including the hotly debated dates of developments in Israel and Spain," Wardle added.

The dates derived from the samples meticulously excavated at Assiros - 25 km from modern-day Thessaloniki - represent the most complete data set for the Greek Bronze Age, covering 400 years from the mid-14th century to the 10th century BC.

The findings are published in the journal PLOS One.