LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Radiocarbon Dating: Ages
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The radiocarbon method has a less convenient, but senior partner in the form of tree-ring dating. This venerable science began in the early part of the twentieth century when A.E. Douglass was looking for a way to investigate the historical relationship between solar activity and climate. He noticed variations in the width of annual growth rings in yellow pine trees growing around Flagstaff, Arizona. The year-to-year variations were the result of changes in rainfall, while the larger patterns were perhaps the result of some longer-term trend. Douglass used a cross-identification system to match patterns in trees of the same age.
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It almost looked as if there were a concerted opposition to the submission of any object dating from the New Kingdom to a radiocarbon test. I have even employed the argument, for instance at my coming to see Dr. William Hayes, the late Director of the Egyptological Department of the Metropolitan Museum of Art: Let the test be made in order to disprove me. My book Ages in Chaos was read by hundreds of thousands of readers and found many followers—why not show me wrong if this is so easy? But such arguments were not effective either.
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As with the Akrotiri dates, these results are uncalibrated in radiocarbon years BP using the half life of 5568 years. The pooled mean date is 3177 ± 44 BP and the calibrated age ranges are c. 1510-1430 cal BC (1 sigma) and c. 1590-1390 cal BC (2 sigma). Betancourt (1987, 47) suggested that the LM II period should be placed between c. 1550 and 1490 BC, whereas Cadogan (1978) has argued LM II dates to between c. 1450 and 1400 BC. The calibration curve in this period means that the Knossos dates can accommodate either hypothesis, and ... the issue remains unresolved.
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[A]s R. D. Long writes in a comprehensive review of dendrochronology, the Suess tree ring calibration curve data “proposed as the solution for correcting conventional radiocarbon ages cannot be applied to Egypt. As will be demonstrated, physical geographical location has crucial meaning to C 14 dating and calibration.” This, he claims, “demolishes the theory on which the Suess curve rested.”(16)
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