And without the bark, there's not even a clue about how much later the tree was cut down to make the gate. :')Do the results from the developing dendrochronology for Anatolia agree or disagree with CoD?Only the results from one Hittite site have been formally published, those from Tille Höyük on the Euphrates. These were striking. The construction of the last phase of the Tille Höyük Gateway is dated to 1101 + 1 BC, with its use lying in the 11th century BC. Yet Tille Höyük was an Imperial Hittite outpost, which on the conventional chronology would have been constructed about 1300 BC, and destroyed c. 1190 BC. The dendro-date is clearly impossible for the conventional chronology. Furthermore, the best fit for this sample (using the normal T-score statistical test) is actually in 942 + 1 BC (James et al. 1998, 41, n. 10)! An extra statistical test had to be introduced to avoid this awkward conclusion.
Peter James et al
CoD FAQ
So far, so good. Over at the New Chronology Group, we have recently come to the conclusion that the Hittite Empire ended in the reign of Egypt's Merneptah, whenever that took place, and the latest date I saw proposed for Merneptah is 885-865 B.C., less than 80 years after the 942 date you mentioned.
The Nefertiti scarab was worn as if from long use -- use for what? is what I'd like to know -- and due to the notoreity of her husband's regime,B 29 (When) Did it Happen? -- Further Resources -- DendrochronologyThis is another scientific dating method with the potential to provide absolute dates for the ancient Near East. It involves matching the annual rings in wood taken from excavations with a master tree-ring sequence. Work is in progress on a master sequence for Anatolia that currently spans over 1500 years. So far this has been joined only indirectly with more modern sequences of tree-rings that could provide a firm anchor for it, but many researchers are already treating it as a reliable yardstick.
by (I guess) John Bimson
Grove Books Online
As such it has been seized on as proof that a drastically shortened chronology cannot work. A Bronze Age shipwreck off Uluburun (Turkey) included among its cargo a scarab of Nefertiti, wife of Akhenaten. A log also from the ship's cargo was dated to shortly before 1300 BC by matching its rings with the Anatolian master dendrochronology. This was hailed as confirmation that Akhenaten reigned in the 14th century BC [8]. However, in a little-publicised statement, the match between the log and the master sequence was subsequently admitted to be doubtful [9].
The task of matching finds to the master sequence is by no means straightforward, as the site of Tille Hoyuk (an outpost of the Hittite Empire) illustrates. Wood from a gateway was matched with the Anatolian master dendrochronology using two statistical criteria (called 'correlation' and 'trend') and dated to the 12th century BC. However, the Tille Hoyuk wood also matched another date very closely on both statistical tests, namely 981 BC: 'For 981 BC, the significance of the correlation was 99.99995% and of the trend, 99.5%. The investigators matched the wood to 1140 BC (correlation significance 99.9995%; trend significance 99.99999%).' [10] The later date for the gate's construction would clearly be incompatible with the conventional chronology, but would strongly support the CD revision. (Note that even the 1140 BC date involves extending Tille Hoyuk's existence several decades beyond the end of the Hittite Empire.)
More fundamentally, D. J. Keenan is suspicious of a methodology that can produce widely-separated dates with this high statistical confidence. He concludes: 'Anatolian dendrochronology should be regarded as suspect and in need of independent scrutiny.' [11]