Questions raised by the Hollstein data

[Lars-Ake]

I have now added an extra section "More information" to my Hollstein pages at http://www.cybis.se/forfun/dendro/hollstein.
The two first items of that section are already reported within this forum/this topic.

Though at the end of that section there are two pictures showing the curve matching (an overlap of 133 years) between the
late end of the floating Roman time curve (supposed to end at AD336) and the late time curve starting at AD410.
Here is a direct link to that section: http://www.cybis.se/forfun/dendro/holls ... /index.htm

[terrarius]

Congratulations! With this graph you found hard evidence for Hollstein's 207 year mismatch!

But how can we now explain the 73 (rsp. 67) year difference between the old Branch of H's chronology and the calibrated wiggle-matched bristlecone DC? [ref. M. G. L. Baillie: A Slice Through Time: Dendrochronology and Precision Dating (1995) p.39 - ask Google for: hollstein error kirnsulzbach]

[Lars-Ake]

...With this graph you found hard evidence for Hollstein's 207 year mismatch!

The quality of the match is indeed good. Though the look of that match may be because of a mix of wood from different times!
Either such a mix might be the cause that made the match at all occur. Or, without the mix the match had looked even better than it now does. Or it is all right.
Only more data will reveal the case. Certainly more unpublished data exists, see e.g.
http://dendro.phil-fak.uni-koeln.de/fil ... erzeit.pdf (90 more stems from the Rhein bridge dated to AD336).


The case of Kirnsulzbach:
Dated by Hollstein to BC443 - probably from a combination of historical evidence and dendrochronology as it was practiced at that time - when the use of computers and the availability of computer software were limiting resources.

My Roman time reference from the Hollstein data ends at BC340 and it has no evident match towards the Kirnsulzbach curve. So I cannot say anything about the dating of Kirnsulzbach!

In his book, Mike Baillie makes quite a big story on mistakes done by Ernst Hollstein.
Though Hollstein published his data to a very high extent and thereby made himself open to criticism.
If all dendrochronologists had followed the scientifically correct path of Hollstein and published their data for an independent scrutiny, then we had not been discussing these chronology problems here today.