Conventional Archaeological Dating is Seriously Mistaken by Stephen Phillips
Shalom Yair
Re: DNA and the Orkney Islands
Your statement concerning the artificial division of history into Stone Age, Bronze Age and Iron Age, as you rightly say, is spurious. I came to this same conclusion a long time ago. Emmanuel Anati, realising this error, opted instead for another flawed theory. He believed that man started off as a primitive hunter, gradually he learned how to farm the land until eventually he became civilized and built cities in which to live. Consequently, everything is classified by Anati to Proto Urban or Urban. This likewise is refuted by actual archaeological evidence. The Greeks tell us that certain tribes or communities in the Middle East were still 'primitive hunters' - hence Proto Urban - as late as the first century bce. Some of these were living in tents made of whale bone or olive trees and used weapons of flint. (See for example Diodorus Library iii.xv.2-7 and iii.xix.1-4.) The American Indians are a further example of how 'primitive' communities were still in existence even as recently as the end of the 19th Century of the Common Era.
As for the dating of pottery, I would strongly recommend you read the book Mycenaeans and Minoans by Leonard B. Palmer, Faber & Faber, London, 1965. (Note the date!) In it, he demonstrates that the Classification of sherd-based pottery invented by Sir Arthur Evans and is still canonical TO THIS DAY is completely fabricated:-
'What emerges clearly from the letter is that Evans as late as September 1905 had no inkling of what had been found in the way of Early Minoan pottery at Knossos. [His chief of works, Duncan] Mackenzie was at a loss to understand how his employer had come to imagine his carefully distinguished strata. Yet in the spring of that year (1905) Evans had communicated to an international congress his famous ‘Système de Classification', which was to remain canonical and is still defended.' p.283
On re-examining Evans' work, Professor Palmer discovered that Late Minoan (LM) II vase was still in the course of being made when the building was destroyed in the LM IIIC period some few hundred years after such style was supposedly discontinued. He also found a LM I-II pot ABOVE a pavement which had sealed in LM IIIB bowls:-
'An LM I-II vase now formed part of the burnt debris deposited above a pavement that had sealed in LM IIIB bowls.' p.248
He has a lot more to say on the matter, but the following is probably worth quoting:-
'Finally, doubts are stimulated on a still more fundamental matter. Archaeologists draw minute distinctions between pottery styles. They have concluded that the palace [at Knossos] was destroyed when LM IIIA:1 was in vogue, and the post-destruction period at Knossos began with the style LM IIIA:2. Leading Aegean archaeologists are now expressing doubts on this basic matter. My own researches support them. If, for instance, some vessels classified as LM IA and LM IB are actually later than some classified as LM IIIB, then much of the current picture of Aegean prehistory lies in ruins. As Professor Levi has written: 'we must wipe the slate clean and start all over again from the very beginning' pp.218-9
Professor Palmer has turned the whole of sherd based pottery dating on its head. Quoting the words of H. van Effenterre, the French excavator of Mallia, he records:-
'One may now say, by a sort of paradox, the more carefully one analyses pottery, the decorative motives or seals or any kind of archaeological objects whatsoever, subdividing them into classes at will, the less one feels justified in attributing to these distinctions any clear-cut chronological significance'. pp.303-4.
Do you not find it strange that archaeologists are completely ignoring this pertinent information? Even now, more than fifty years after Professor Palmer's report, they are still using a system of classification which has been fabricated.