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_Tree-ring Evidence For Environmental Disasters During The Bronze Age:
Causes And Effects_

_Mike G L Baillie_

_Palaeoecology Centre, School of Geosciences, Queen's University,
Belfast, Northern Ireland_
_e-mail: mbaillie at queens-belfast.ac.uk_

In 1988 the observation was made that narrowest-ring events in Irish
sub-fossil oak chronologies appeared to line up with large acidities
in the Greenland ice records from Camp Century and Dye3. Three of the
events, at tree-ring ages 2345 BC, 1628 BC and 1159 BC turned out to
be of particular interest as they contributed to debates on the Hekla
4 eruption in Iceland, dated to 2310±20 CalBC, Santorini in the
Aegean, dated to circa 1670-1530 CalBC, and, possibly, Hekla 3, linked
by Hammer and colleagues to their 1120±30 BC acid layer. It quickly
became apparent, most notably through comments from Kevin Pang, that
the two later events might relate in some way to the start and end of
the Chinese Shang dynasty. It is equally of interest that the Egyptian
New Kingdom traditionally spans the approximate range 1570 to 1080 BC.
So the question arose whether these two volcano-related events could
have caused widespread dynastic change. In order to proceed with this
debate it is necessary to attempt to get a better handle on the nature
of the effects. This paper will look at information from American and
Fennoscandian tree-ring records and make some attempt to define the
nature of the 1628 BC and 1159 BC events; are they truly abrupt, as
would be expected with volcanoes, or are they imposed on pre-existing
downturns. Existing exidence suggests that the latter may be the case.
If this is correct, it seems appropriate to ask what might have caused
the downturns? This question leads logically to the speculation that
loading of the atmosphere from space might be a significant factor in
the environmental downturns.
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MIKE BAILLIE is a professor in the Palaeoecology Centre, School of
Geosciences, Queen's University, Belfast, N. Ireland. After reading
physics at Queen's he moved into Archaeology and Palaeoecology taking
a particular interest in chronology. His specialism is
dendrochronology, and he has been involved in the construction of some
of the first, long, oak chronologies. Using information from tree-ring
records, he has attempted to identify abrupt environmental downturns
in the past and to demonstrate their effects on past human
populations. He publishes widely on these and related topics and is
the author of _A Slice Through Time: dendrochronology and precision
dating_ (London: Routledge 1995).
_________________________________________________________________

Presented at the SIS Conference: [1]Natural Catastrophes during Bronze
Age Civilisations.

References

1. file://localhost/www/sat/cambconf.htm