Kyrenia wreck during excavation in the 1960s.Kyrenia Ship Excavation
Reassembled hull of the Kyrenia ship .Kyrenia Ship Excavation
Posted on 07/05/2024 11:27:44 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
According to a statement released by Public Library of Science, researchers have applied updated radiocarbon calibration techniques to revise the dating of the wreck of the Kyrenia, an ancient ship that was discovered and excavated off the coast of Cyprus in the late 1960s. Based on coins and ceramics recovered from the wreck, researchers had dated the ship to the late fourth or early third century B.C., which did not align with the radiocarbon dates from decades ago. Tree-ring dating is crucial in obtaining accurate radiocarbon dates because it helps correct errors caused by variations over time in atmospheric carbon. Even as radiocarbon dating methods have improved, calibration curves for some periods in the Northern Hemisphere have not been revised. Using new tree-ring samples, a team led by archaeologist Sturt Manning of Cornell University updated the calibration data for the period between 433 and 250 B.C. Then the researchers applied this calibration to new radiocarbon dates taken from remains of the Kyrenia ship and its latest dated cargo. These new dates suggest that the ship took its final voyage around 280 B.C., at least a decade later than previous dating had indicated. Read the original scholarly article about this research in PLOS ONE. For more, go to "History's 10 Greatest Wrecks...Kyrenia."
(Excerpt) Read more at archaeology.org ...
Kyrenia wreck during excavation in the 1960s.Kyrenia Ship Excavation
Reassembled hull of the Kyrenia ship .Kyrenia Ship Excavation
Did they date the wood from the ship or its cargo?
The ship could have been 50 years old when it sank........................
Hard to say. Regarding the Uluburun wreck (the earlier topic), a piece of plain lumber from the cargo could be spared and was RC dated. It was at first trumpeted as being confirmation of the age. Later it was realized that the newest ring was centuries too young for the conventional dating of the wreck. The explanation [sic] was that centuries later, this piece of wood drifted along, then sank and embedded itself in the wreck. Wood floats until its convenient for it to arbitrarily sink. :^)
Ah, it sez from the ship itself and its final cargo.
https://eurekalert.org/news-releases/1048824
original paper:
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0302645
If the ship sank in 290, it would have been during the reign of Ptolemy I. If in 280, it would have been during the reign of Ptolemy II, who supposedly commissioned the Septuagint translation of the Hebrew Scriptures.
Geez no wonder it sank ......
Actually, it was an early submarine. ;^)
[snip] Research on 7 recovered coins and plentiful ceramics, in particular amphora stamps, from the shipwreck led to the assessment of a date for the last voyage and ultimate wrecking around 294–290 BCE. The specificity of this date is conspicuous. A single coin (C7) is key [6]; Keen argues for a terminus post quem (TPQ) for this coin of 294 BCE ([6] at p.390). Otherwise, the ceramics and other coins (and/or choosing a potential earlier minimum TPQ dating for C7 at 310–306 BCE) collectively only define a likely possible date range for the final voyage from the late 4th century (e.g. after ca. 325/320 BCE) to the early 3rd century BC (e.g. before 280/270 BCE), quantified as likely about 310–290 BCE ([6, 7] at pp.142-145, [8] at pp.272-274). [/snip]
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0302645
Cargo.
Cargo makes sense, the ship could have been half a century old................
Ummm...time travel?
I thought I saw Shatner wandering around down by the Bay...
“...the ship took its final voyage around 280 B.C., at least a decade later than previous dating had indicated.”
Sounds like they merely substituted one wild-assed-guess with another.
Well, if the coin is accurately dated to 294 B.C., and many ancient coins can be dated to a year or to a narrow range of years, the ship wreck would have to be later than 294. So at least they are in the ballpark.
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