A03_P23

AMS dating data on excavations at the citadel of Yaroslavl solve the dispute between archaeologists and dendrochronology specialists

Engovatova A¹, Cherkinsky A³, Matskovsky V², Karpukhin  A¹, Zazovskaya E²

¹Institute of Archaeology RAS, Moscow, Russian Federation, ²Institute of Geography RAS, Moscow, Russian Federation, ³University of Georgia, CAIS, , Athens

During the excavations in 2004-2022 in the citadel of Yaroslavl (Central part of

Russia) were found nine sanitary burials of the time of the defeat of the city in

1238. For a more accurate dating of the event, samples were taken from each of the

nine burials. All 37 AMS dates (UGAM) obtained fit into a narrow data interval - when all the

results were combined, a calibrated date of 1221–1259 was identified.

In 2020, archaeologists unearthed another burial. Dendro dates obtained for this

burial did not coincide with previous results.  Ten oak samples have been

successfully cross-dated, and a floating chronology 177 years long has been built.

As there is no oak tree-ring chronology for Yaroslavl, this floating chronology has

been cross-dated with the nearest Smolensk oak chronology (~600 km distance to

South-West from the city of Yaroslavl). However, cross-dating statistics is not high

enough to be sure in the acquired dating. For this reason, we additionally obtained

AMS dates (IGAN) for 17 wooden samples. Some of the ¹⁴C dates overlap with

the obtained tree-ring dates, others do not. We also failed to obtain convergence on

wiggle-matching (D_Sequence, OxCal) for all the 17 AMS dates. Those seven

dates that converge, however, show earlier period for the outermost rings of the

floating oak chronology: AD 1214-1232 (95.4%).

Despite some contradictions in the acquired AMS dating results, we found better

correspondence of the seven converged dates to the archaeological context, than to

the obtained dendrochronological dates.