ABSTRACT
We are appreciative of Professor Kopcke’s comments, as we feel they get to the heart of the kinds of problems in early Iron Age chronology that prompted this volume. What follows is only a beginning. Charred construction timbers collected during excavations at Assiros in north Greece provide the first direct near-absolute dates for the start of the Early Iron Age in Macedonia, and by
extension, in southern Greece.2 The techniques of dendrochronological cross-dating and dendrochronological 14C wiggle-matching (DWM) are applied to archaeologically well-stratified charcoal samples, and provide two near-absolute dates that bracket the appearance of a diagnostic ceramic style (Fig. 8.1) that was exported and widely exchanged across the eastern Mediterranean, including to sites in the southern Levant.3 Protogeometric sherds found at sites in the Levant so far are attributed to later stages in its development. However, raising the dates for the beginning of its appearance entails a reconsideration of recent proposals that Greek ceramics found in the East better ‘fit’ Finkelstein’s proposed ‘low’ chronological scheme (Coldstream 2003; Fantalkin 2001). A discussion of the implications of the near-absolute dates at Assiros follows a review of the techniques used to arrive at them.
