Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>]

On 22/09/2005 00:19, Bill Rea wrote:

> On Thu, 22 Sep 2005, Peter Kirk wrote:
>
>  
>
> > There are also a number of very serious technical difficulties with
> > dendrochronological dating, especially of anything related to the Middle
> > East - which is based on unpublished data. While I certainly don't
> > reject such methods out of hand like Karl and James, neither do I accept
> > that all questions have been solved by some marvellous scientific wizardry.
> >
> >    
>
> If you're concerned about the Middle East dendrochronological dating
> a good web site is:-
>
> http://www.arts.cornell.edu/dendro/
>
> This covers the Aegean and Near East. As for unpublished data, I
> offer no comment.
>  

Nor can I, because I can't point you to the data because it is 
unpublished. These Cornell people have published their interpretations 
of the data they have discovered, but not the data itself. So their 
results cannot be checked by their peers or anyone else. There is no way 
to check whether their particular matches between different tree ring 
sequences are the only possible ones, or just the possibility out of 
several which fits best with their chronological presuppositions (see 
the quotation below). This failure to publish one's data is bad science. 
And yet everyone thinks they can depend on their results.

> Harold Holmyard recommended the following site:-
>
>  
>
> > http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/faq/docs/tree_ring.asp
> >    
>
> It says early on:-
>
>  
>
> > However, when the interpretation of scientific data contradicts the true
> > history of the world as revealed in the Bible, then it's the
> > interpretation of the data that is at fault.
> >    
>
> This is faith, not science. I offer no further comment.
>  

I don't rely on this argument. But the following from this same page 
explains better the uncertainty I noted above:

> The biggest problem with the process is that ring patterns are not 
> unique. There are many points in a given sequence where a sequence 
> from a new piece of wood match well (note that even two trees growing 
> next to each other will not have /identical/ growth ring patterns). 
> Yamaguchi recognized that ring pattern matches are not unique. The 
> best match (using statistical tests) is often rejected in favour of a 
> less exact match because the best match is deemed to be ‘incorrect’ 
> (particularly if it is too far away from the carbon-14 ‘age’). So the 
> carbon ‘date’ is used to constrain just which match is acceptable. 
> Consequently, the calibration is a circular process and the tree ring 
> chronology extension is also a circular process that is dependent on 
> assumptions about the carbon dating system.


--
Peter Kirk
peter AT qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
http://www.qaya.org/



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