Dying in the Hallstatt Plateau: the case of wooden coffins from Iron Age necropolises in Mallorca (Balearic Islands, Wes
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(2020) 12:247
ORIGINAL PAPER
Dying in the Hallstatt Plateau: the case of wooden coffins from Iron Age necropolises in Mallorca (Balearic Islands, Western Mediterranean) and the difficulties in defining their chronology Manuel Calvo Trias 1 & Mark Van Strydonck 2 & Llorenç Picornell-Gelabert 1 & Mathieu Boudin 2 & Daniel Albero Santacreu 1 & Margalida Coll Sabater 1 & Jaume Garcia Rosselló 1 Received: 27 March 2020 / Accepted: 11 September 2020 # Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Iron Age archaeology in Europe and the Mediterranean often faces significant difficulties to establish precise chronological frameworks by means of radiocarbon dating due to the so-called Hallstatt Plateau. This problem worsens in those archaeological sites excavated decades ago with a lack of stratigraphic control of the objects recovered. The archaeological studies carried out in Iron Age funerary contexts from Mallorca (Balearic Islands) are greatly affected by these two distorting factors. Therefore, it has been difficult to establish an accurate chronology for the origin and abandonment of certain individualization practices, such as the use of wooden coffins in collective necropolises. The goal of this paper is to overcome these limitations and to define the most reliable chronological framework for this funerary phenomenon by applying a multi-proxy approach. Thus, the chronological information provided by the detailed typological study of the material culture associated with the wooden coffins was connected to the results obtained from an extensive series of new radiocarbon dating of the wooden coffins. In addition, a wiggle-matching analysis (different 14C dates for the same wooden object corresponding to individual tree-rings) was also conducted in some wooden coffins in order to enhance the precision of the radiocarbon dates. Accordingly, the direct and indirect chronological information show that the use of wooden coffins in Mallorca started around 800–750 cal BC and was abandoned at c. 350–300 cal BC. Keywords Radiocarbon dating . Hallstatt Plateau . Tree-rings dating . Wiggle-matching . Wooden coffins . Iron Age . Mallorca . Balearic Islands
Introduction: definition of the problem and objectives The archaeological problem of the Hallstatt plateau Chronological dating of given contexts is one of the major foundations upon which archaeological understanding is based, and it is from here that we are able to make assumptions regarding the social dynamics and practices that took place around these contexts. In the field of prehistory, squaring
* Llorenç Picornell-Gelabert [email protected] 1
ArqueoUIB Research Group. Department of Historical Sciencies and Theory of Arts, University of the Balearic Islands, Palma, Spain
2
Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage, Brussels, Belgium
chronologies of archaeological findings relies almost entirely on the use of absolute dating. The radiocarbon dating of organic materials is the most widely used method for recent chronologies. However, the potentia
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