The ambiguous match in the Hollstein chronology

The ambiguous match in the Hollstein chronology
by Lars-Åke Larsson & Petra Ossowski Larsson

Confirming the dating of the Middle collection to AD 401-716.

East Anglia Incident chronology files With the "East Anglia incident", a number of "classical" European oak chronologies became available on the internet to anybody interested.

One of these curves is the "a100" mean value ring width curve containing the comments "GERMANY", "BECKER S-CENTRAL EUROPE 546BC TO AD1979". The original file can be directly read by CDendro as a ring width file if it is first renamed to e.g. "a100.datw". For your analysis, here is a .rwl-version of the a100 chronology. The a100 curve is an extended and modernized version of Becker's curve of 1981. (See also our two sections on the Becker curve!)

To deem from an attached comment, these "classical" chronology files were considered "modern masters" in 1995, i.e. 15 years after Hollstein published his chronology.

Comparing the Middle collection of Hollstein's data towards the a100 curve

The middle collection compared to the "a100" curve drifting on the internet after the East Anglia "publication".

The good match also demonstrates how well the retrieved Hollstein data matches an established master curve! - Hollstein's curves are by no way "sketchy figures" but instead carefully documented measurements and mean values!

Comparing the AD 401-543 data of the Middle collection to Hollstein's late Roman time data

Hollstein's data is wrong! - Consequences?

If the match shown above was in all ways correct it would indicate a 207 years error within our chronology. Such an error is - as far as we know - unacceptable to any established historian! What's left is to suppose that the match is caused by incorrect data.

Then, how could Hollstein with this very incorrect data create a correct reference chronology that dates Roman time wood? - Consequently we assume that Hollstein's dating of Roman time wood is incorrect, i.e.

THE CELTIC AND ROMAN BLOCK OF THE HOLLSTEIN REFERENCE (1980) IS FLOATING!

A bizarre consequence - which we then also have to assume - is that all dendrochronological datings done on West Roman time wood is wrong by some unknown number of years!

Continue with the next section!

Lars-Åke Larsson & Petra Ossowski Larsson 21 Sept 2010. (This and the previous sections are based on a lecture hold at a round-table meeting in Bibracte, Centre archéologique européen, France in May 2010, initialized by Georges Lambert.)