Glossary entry

English term or phrase:

conventional dating

Spanish translation:

datación cronológica convencional

Added to glossary by Ana Juliá
Mar 24, 2004 18:47
20 yrs ago
2 viewers *
English term

conventional dating

English to Spanish Other Archaeology
Dr. Garstang and his assistants examined over 100,000 potsherds from the site of Jericho and from these he dated the destruction of the city to the middle of the Late Bronze Age (c. 1400 BC in conventional dating) which was in contradiction to the generally accepted date of the Exodus and conquest which was then considered to be at the time of the 19th Dynasty of Egypt some 200 years later.

Proposed translations

+3
20 mins
Selected

fecha/datación cronológica convencional (mediante el carbono 14)

la datación cronológica mediante técnicas convencionales



ABSTRACT. Sedimentological, mineralogical and geochemical analyses of sediment cores from 9 m-deep, saline, Laguna Miscanti, Chile (23° 44'S, 67°46'W, 4140 m a.s.l.) together with high-resolution seismic profiles provide a mid to late Holocene time series of regional environmental change in the Atacama Altiplano constrained by 210Pb and conventional 14C dating. The mid Holocene was the most arid interval since the last glacial maximum, as documented by subaerial exposure and formation of hardgrounds on a playa surface. Extremely low lake levels during the mid Holocene appear consistent with lower effective moisture recorded at other sites along the Altiplano and in the Amazon Basin. Termination of this arid period represented a major shift in the regional environmental dynamics and inaugurated modern atmospheric conditions








JERICHO Part VI - The Update

We have seen in our discussion of the sites of Ai and Jericho that the orthodox view was that neither site showed any evidence of the Biblical account of the conquest. This was due to the fact that in conventional dating, the attack on Ai and Jericho by Joshua and the Children of Israel took place at the end of the Late Bronze Age and in neither case was there any evidence of a Late Bronze Age city.

We further showed that if the conventional chronology was abandoned in favor of our revision, all the archaeological evidence confirmed the Biblical account.

With the same object in mind others have come up with alternative solutions which we have not found satisfactory but we feel that they should be mentioned.

Their solutions have fallen into two main categories.

1) The conventional dating is correct but the interpretation of the sites has been in error.

2) The conventional dating is in error but they opt for a different solution to our revision.

The first category has been spearheaded by archaeologists in the group "Associates for Biblical Research" Dr. David Livingston, the founder and Dr. Bryant Wood an expert in the dating of ancient pottery.

They both accept the conventional chronology and believe the solution to the problem is different for each of the sites. As far as Ai is concerned, Dr. Livingston suggests that the identification of the site itself is in error and that Ai should instead be identified with a site "1 kilometer east of El-Bireh". (The Westminster Theological Journal XXXIII) He has done extensive work to try and prove his case to the orthodox scholars, so far without much success.

Dr. Wood on the other hand has suggested in a widely quoted paper in the prestigious Biblical Archaeological Review (16:2 1990), that Dame Kathleen Kenyon was wrong in her assessment of the site and that the town which she dated to the Middle Bronze Age should in fact be dated to the late Bronze Age. Thus it would confirm the Biblical account exactly. The end of the Late Bronze Age being dated by conventional chronology at 1400 BC.

His argument involved four separate pieces of evidence which he claimed were either not known or ignored by Kenyon.

1) The Pottery. Wood suggests that Kenyon both misinterpreted the type of pottery not found and ignored the pottery that was found. This is not the place to go deeper into the argument but it has to be noted that the position of Wood were rebutted by the foremost living expert on Jericho, Piotr Bienkowski in a later edition of the Biblical Archaeological Review (16:5 1990). (I will put Wood's complete argument in the library when we have the relevant permissions).

2) The Scarabs. John Garstang had found a small series of scarabs in his excavation of the cemetery at Jericho. They covered the period from the XIIIth to the XVIIIth dynasty and then ended. A very small sample (only four scarabs) were from the XVIIIth dynasty and two were from Amenhotep III (conventional date c 1386-1349 BC ). Wood from this meager evidence surmises that the cemetery was in use until the end of the Late Bronze Age. Others have suggested that scarabs because of their value were often kept for long periods of time as keepsakes and that they are, for that reason alone, not very reliable markers or time.

3) A carbon 14 dating sample which was taken from the final destruction layer of the city and dated 1400 BC plus or minus 40 years. The location of the find has been disputed and it is very dangerous to accept just one carbon dating sample anywhere at any time.


Peer comment(s):

agree Patricia Fierro, M. Sc.
23 mins
muchas gracias Patricia!
agree Luisa Ramos, CT
5 hrs
gracias Luisabel!
agree Begoña Yañez
6 hrs
gracias Begoña!
Something went wrong...
4 KudoZ points awarded for this answer. Comment: "Gracias"
Term search
  • All of ProZ.com
  • Term search
  • Jobs
  • Forums
  • Multiple search