Kuniholm With National Science Foundation support Dr. Kuniholm will continue to develop a dendrochronological sequence for Southern Europe and the Near East. To date he has collected sections of sequences which extend back to ca. 7,500 BC and which cover major portions of Turkey, Greece, Italy and adjacent areas in Southeastern Europe. With partial NSF support he will continue this work. Over the course of two field seasons, together with his colleagues, he will visit numerous sites in the region to collect old wood. Analysis at Kuniholm's Cornell laboratory will then permit their incorporation into a master chronology. The goals of this work are to fill in the gaps which remain in the chronology and to fill in its extended range. This research is important for several reasons. Most importantly, from an archaeological perspective, a tree ring chronology will provide an absolute dating technique which will allow dates to be assigned to wood and charcoal recovered from archaeological sites. Precise dating is critical in such research. The information will also be useful to paleoecologists, climatologists and others who use data derived from the past. The tree ring chronology will not only provide a basis to increase our understanding of past human behavior, but will also help to illumine such issues as the effect of human actions on climate.
