Papers by Tiziano Fantuzzi
Chronos: Stratigraphic Analysis, Pottery Seriation and Radiocarbon Dating in Mediterranean Chronology, 2024
Paper discussing an experimental use of correspondence analysis for chronological purposes at Kno... more Paper discussing an experimental use of correspondence analysis for chronological purposes at Knossos, discussing dataset creation, and highlighting some issues raised by the analyses.
More generally a discussion of the problems in synthetic research at Knossos, or other large legacy ceramics datasets.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, adapted or translated, in any... more All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, adapted or translated, in any form or by any means, in any country, without the prior permission of Presses universitaires de Louvain Cover design: Hélène Grégoire Cover Image: Vases found in 1872 by Mamet and Gorceix, later colouring (©Archives de l'Académie des Inscriptions-et-Belles-Lettres, 14G11) Volume set in Adobe InDesign by Nicolas Kress
AEGIS 26 - CHRONOS, 2024
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, adapted or translated, in any... more All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, adapted or translated, in any form or by any means, in any country, without the prior permission of Presses universitaires de Louvain Cover design: Hélène Grégoire Cover Image: Vases found in 1872 by Mamet and Gorceix, later colouring (©Archives de l'Académie des Inscriptions-et-Belles-Lettres, 14G11) Volume set in Adobe InDesign by Nicolas Kress
Journal of Greek Archaeology vol.8, 2023
The volcanic eruption of Santorini/Thera Island, which occurred in the 2nd millennium BC or the L... more The volcanic eruption of Santorini/Thera Island, which occurred in the 2nd millennium BC or the Late Bronze Age (LBA), is one of the biggest catastrophic events recorded in world archaeology. Moreover, it marks a key-moment for Aegean and eastern Mediterranean chronology as it happened at the very height of the Minoan Neopalatial civilisation, a society with interconnections all over the eastern Mediterranean from Egypt to the Levantine coast, Cyprus and Anatolia. Notwithstanding its importance, the absolute (calendric) date of this event is still unsettled and forms the object of a debate which has been ongoing over the last five decades. The issue at stake is particularly difficult to assess, as it involves an extremely high degree of multidisciplinarity, including in-depth studies in disciplines that include Mediterranean (and Global) Archaeology, Egyptian Epigraphy, a wide range of Environmental Sciences, Physics and Mathematics/Statistics. Given this extreme complexity, obtaining a comprehensive view of the problem is not an easy matter, in particular for those archaeologists who have little background in the issues of isotopic dating, on the one hand, and for natural scientists that have partial command of the problems and intricacies of the specific archaeological sources, on the other. The aim of the present paper is to provide a synthetic view and a summary of the recent state of the art of the debate, and to provide a possible key to the subject for non-specialists, with a particular focus on the middle 16th century BC hypothesis for the eruption.
AEGIS Day VI - Louvain la Neuve, 17 May 2022, 2022
P. Biagi, R. Nisbet, A. Girod, T. Fantuzzi 2013 -The Middle Holocene mangrove shellfish gatherers of Las Bela coast (Balochistan, Pakistan): new AMS dates from Lake Siranda shell middens
Antiquity Project Gallery, 87 (337) 9 pp. http://antiquity.ac.uk/projgall/biagi337, Sep 1, 2013
The discovery and AMS adiocarbon dating of many shell middens along the southern shores of the dr... more The discovery and AMS adiocarbon dating of many shell middens along the southern shores of the dry basin of Lake Siranda (Las Bela, Balochistan, Pakistan) have shown that it was a shallow lagoon of the Arabian Sea in Neolithic times
11th Day of Belgian Archaeology in Greece, Brussels, 10th December 2021, 2021
In order to write the history of international relations of the later Middle and Late Bronze Age ... more In order to write the history of international relations of the later Middle and Late Bronze Age in the eastern Mediterranean we need to establish whether, at the time of the Minoan eruption of Santorini, the Egypt which was linked to the Aegean, Cyprus and the Levantine region was that of [..] earlier Second Intermediate Period on the one hand or that of the early New Kingdom (Dyn. XVIII) on the other." (P.M. Warren)) Conflicting chronologies: "High" chronology (= 1630-1600 BCE) "Low" chronology (=1540/30-1500 BCE) ("Ultra-low" now almost abandoned)) Debate (and polemics) ongoing since the 1970's
A Reassessment of the Debate on LM I A and interlinked Chronologies through Radiocarbon and Comparative Analysis. PhD Thesis. Universita' Ca'Foscari, Venezia., 2019
Archaeologische Mitteilungen aus Iran und Turam, 2016
Summary
The research carried out between 2000 and 2014 along the north Arabian Sea coast of Lower... more Summary
The research carried out between 2000 and 2014 along the north Arabian Sea coast of Lower Sindh and Las Bela in Balochistan (Pakistan) has shown that the two regions started to be settled, in and around mangroves, during the last three centuries of the 9th millennium BP. The sites discovered during fieldwork are represented by shell middens, shell scatters and fishermen villages, the presence of which was almost unknown until the beginning of the 2000s. Many of the sites were sampled for conventional and AMS radiocarbon dating from mangrove gastropods, and more rarely marine shells. So far 105 sites have been AMS (GrA-) or conventionally (GrN-) radiocarbon-dated, 84 of which from Terebralia palustris or Telescopium telescopium adult specimens. This paper describes the results so far obtained from three well-defined macro areas (Lake Siranda, the coastline between Cape Gadani and the Hab River mouth, and the Indus Delta) where this research methodology has been applied. The results contribute to the study of the archaeology of the coastal area of present-day Pakistan, the definition of the sea-shore variations that took place since the middle of the Atlantic period, the disappearance and exploitation of ancient mangroves, and the modes of advance of the Indus Delta up to Historic times. Furthermore it contributes to the study of the early navigation along the northern coast of the Arabian Sea inhabited by different groups of fish-eaters (ichthyophagoi).
Universita' Ca'Foscari, Scuola Dottorale Interateneo in Scienze dell'Antichita', ciclo XXXI, 2019
The absolute chronology of the Late Minoan I A period and in particular the date of the Minoan er... more The absolute chronology of the Late Minoan I A period and in particular the date of the Minoan eruption at Santorini is the object of a debate which is ongoing since the 1970’s, and lead many scholars to speak of a "conflict" between archaeological and Radiocarbon dating. This study
presents a collation of all the main arguments for the archaeological chronology in the bibliography, and a reanalysis of the radiocarbon datasets from Akrotiri on Santorini, Tell el Dab'a in Egypt and
other relevant sites for the interlinked chronology. In particular, a critic approach to the accuracy of Bayesian chronology applied so far and a new possible approach to radiocarbon interpretation based on notions from Quantum mathematics are suggested, which, in combination with the new dendrochronological data from Pearson et al 2018, provide new evidence for an eruption date possibly as late as the second half of the XVI century BC. In addition, an open source package to perform the different analyses has been developed and uploaded on-line at the site
http://c14.bpinfo.org
In the light of recent developments on the accuracy of the radiocarbon
chronology of the LM IA Th... more In the light of recent developments on the accuracy of the radiocarbon
chronology of the LM IA Theran Eruption, this paper intends to clarify the difference between radiocarbon chronology and the statistical interpretation of radiocarbon results, suggesting a prudent application of statistical analysis to both radiocarbon dates and chronology problems. The authors consider the estimation of the Minoan eruption at Thera by means of a Bayesian model as an example of overconfidence on a statistic-based methodology. The same analysis will be applied to a simulated set of non-coeval radiocarbon dates with the purpose to show that the result is adverse to the initial assumptions on the dates. On one hand, this occurs because the model fails to recognise the uncertainties due to the shape of the calibration curve in the interval of the considered dates. On the other hand, the outcome of a χ-square test is improperly used to ascertain the contemporaneity of radiocarbon dates. The availability of simple statistical tools does not allow their indiscriminate applications and can lead to inaccurate conclusions. The authors suggest that an approach to the chronological problem should consider the environmental context of samples as carefully as their radiocarbon determinations.
i vasi tubolari) cominciano a venire prodotti a Creta. Tuttavia l'attribuzione cretese dell'etnon... more i vasi tubolari) cominciano a venire prodotti a Creta. Tuttavia l'attribuzione cretese dell'etnonimo Keft(i)u non trova consenso unanime unanime: il termine potrebbe ben descrivere,oltre a Creta, la Siria settentrionale, la Cilicia (Furumark) oppure un area del Mediterraneo comprendente da Creta alla costa Cilicia (Evans, Pendlebury). Ad ogni modo l'identificazione di Keft(i)u con Creta è sostenuta da una serie di indizi, come le raffigurazioni, nelle tombe Tebane della XVIII Din, di Keft(i)u con caratteri ed oggetti tipicamente egei, e la presenza di alcuni errori 6 od imprecisioni nelle tombe dove essi appaiono raffigurati come asiatici -od assieme ad asiatici ( ad es. nella tomba di Menkheperraseneb e di Kenamon) ed infine le liste di luoghi egei associate col toponimo Keftiu nella lista EN di Kom el Hetan. 7 L'altra grande prova invocata per l'identificazione di KFTW con Creta è la tavoletta n.5647 del British Museum, recante una lista di nomi egei 8 , intitolata irt rn n kftw ("fare i nomi di Keftiu"?). La maggiore difficoltà nel trovare riscontro a questa interpretazione, sta probabilmente nel fatto che non è noto da alcuna fonte il nome Cretese di Creta 9 .
Il quadro dei contatti e degli scambi tra la Creta Minoica e l'Egitto è oggetto di ampio dib... more Il quadro dei contatti e degli scambi tra la Creta Minoica e l'Egitto è oggetto di ampio dibattito già da una settantina di anni. In particolare negli ultimi trent'anni il dibattito sui Keftu rappresentati nelle tombe del Nuovo Regno e sulla cronologia assoluta dell'inizio del Tardo Bronzo si è sviluppato ed articolato su due posizioni contrastanti: la cronologia" alta", basata sulle datazioni radiocarboniche, e la cronologia" bassa", basata sulla ricostruzione archeologica dei contesti. In particolare il sito di Avaris/Tell el Dab'a, oggetto di un ...
Since the late 70's, the archaeological-historical interrelated chronology for the Aegean Late Br... more Since the late 70's, the archaeological-historical interrelated chronology for the Aegean Late Bronze Age has been seriously questioned by the analysis of radiocarbon measurements from Akrotiri and elsewhere in the Aegean. During the last three decades, the debate between “archaeological” and “radiocarbon” chronologies has become one of the most important all of Mediterranean Bronze Age Archaeology, and lead to the publication of an extremely huge amount of bibliography. Recent studies (cfr. Höflmayer 2012) show that uncertainty does in fact affect the arguments for both the “Low” and the “High” Aegean Chronologies, but a thorough analysis of the debate on the absolute chronology for Late Minoan I shows that the so-called “conflict” between “Quantitative” and “Humanistic” Science in establishing an absolute chronology for the Aegean early Late Bronze Age does not exist. What we are faced with is rather a matter of different basic statistical approaches on the one side, and of different interpretation of the archaeological record on the other. Even if the two fields seemed to merge in the last three decades, the present impasse shows how far from a real multidisciplinary approach we are, let alone from quantifying the real relationship between “precision”and “accuracy” applied to high-precision chronological reconstructions and show that the supposed conflict between “natural” and “humanistic” science is rather a conflict between different interpretative models. This study aims to summarize and re-address the ongoing debate on the conflict between “Humanistic” and “Natural” Sciences in the case-study of LM I A chronology with a special focus on the accuracy of the use of Bayesian analysis of radiocarbon results for establishing an absolute chronology.
Since the late 1970's, the archaeological-historical interrelated chronology for the Aegean Late ... more Since the late 1970's, the archaeological-historical interrelated chronology for the Aegean Late Bronze Age has been seriously questioned by a number of radiocarbon measurements from Akrotiri and other sites in the Aegean. During the last three decades, the debate between "archaeological" and "radiocarbon" chronologies has become one of the most important issues of the entire Mediterranean Bronze Age
Egypt take place all through the Bronze Age in very different forms. The hypothesis of an "Africa... more Egypt take place all through the Bronze Age in very different forms. The hypothesis of an "African" influence on the development of Minoan civilization seems by now very reductive and unlikely, and the arguments advocated have proven to be controversial and outdated.. Direct and indirect contacts are attested from an archaeological point of view from as early as the Early Bronze Age, and become increasingly significant in correspondence with the development of the Middle Kingdom and later Hyksos/Canaanite international trading networks. Between the Middle and Late Bronze Age interrelations between Minoan Crete and Egypt certainly started to reach significant proportions and an official status, with Minoan artisans
Antiquity (Project Gallery), vol. 87, issue 337, Aug 2013
nome -il sito di Riparo Tagliente si apre alla base di una falesia oolitica a circa 226 mt. s.l.m... more nome -il sito di Riparo Tagliente si apre alla base di una falesia oolitica a circa 226 mt. s.l.m., alle pendici del Monte Tregnago (Grezzana, Verona, BARTOLOMEI , 1984; FONTANA ET AL.
Egitto ellenistico-romano Sp. 6 CFU
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Papers by Tiziano Fantuzzi
More generally a discussion of the problems in synthetic research at Knossos, or other large legacy ceramics datasets.
The research carried out between 2000 and 2014 along the north Arabian Sea coast of Lower Sindh and Las Bela in Balochistan (Pakistan) has shown that the two regions started to be settled, in and around mangroves, during the last three centuries of the 9th millennium BP. The sites discovered during fieldwork are represented by shell middens, shell scatters and fishermen villages, the presence of which was almost unknown until the beginning of the 2000s. Many of the sites were sampled for conventional and AMS radiocarbon dating from mangrove gastropods, and more rarely marine shells. So far 105 sites have been AMS (GrA-) or conventionally (GrN-) radiocarbon-dated, 84 of which from Terebralia palustris or Telescopium telescopium adult specimens. This paper describes the results so far obtained from three well-defined macro areas (Lake Siranda, the coastline between Cape Gadani and the Hab River mouth, and the Indus Delta) where this research methodology has been applied. The results contribute to the study of the archaeology of the coastal area of present-day Pakistan, the definition of the sea-shore variations that took place since the middle of the Atlantic period, the disappearance and exploitation of ancient mangroves, and the modes of advance of the Indus Delta up to Historic times. Furthermore it contributes to the study of the early navigation along the northern coast of the Arabian Sea inhabited by different groups of fish-eaters (ichthyophagoi).
presents a collation of all the main arguments for the archaeological chronology in the bibliography, and a reanalysis of the radiocarbon datasets from Akrotiri on Santorini, Tell el Dab'a in Egypt and
other relevant sites for the interlinked chronology. In particular, a critic approach to the accuracy of Bayesian chronology applied so far and a new possible approach to radiocarbon interpretation based on notions from Quantum mathematics are suggested, which, in combination with the new dendrochronological data from Pearson et al 2018, provide new evidence for an eruption date possibly as late as the second half of the XVI century BC. In addition, an open source package to perform the different analyses has been developed and uploaded on-line at the site
http://c14.bpinfo.org
chronology of the LM IA Theran Eruption, this paper intends to clarify the difference between radiocarbon chronology and the statistical interpretation of radiocarbon results, suggesting a prudent application of statistical analysis to both radiocarbon dates and chronology problems. The authors consider the estimation of the Minoan eruption at Thera by means of a Bayesian model as an example of overconfidence on a statistic-based methodology. The same analysis will be applied to a simulated set of non-coeval radiocarbon dates with the purpose to show that the result is adverse to the initial assumptions on the dates. On one hand, this occurs because the model fails to recognise the uncertainties due to the shape of the calibration curve in the interval of the considered dates. On the other hand, the outcome of a χ-square test is improperly used to ascertain the contemporaneity of radiocarbon dates. The availability of simple statistical tools does not allow their indiscriminate applications and can lead to inaccurate conclusions. The authors suggest that an approach to the chronological problem should consider the environmental context of samples as carefully as their radiocarbon determinations.