Detail of Bristlecone pine wood. Image courtesy of Chris Linder.

The Parrhasian Heritage Park contains many internationally recognized archaeological sites like the Temple at Lykasoura.

Equipment in the NSF AMS Laboratory.

The Mt Lykaion Excavation, Greece. Maya Gupta, Alexis Belis, Arvey Basa and Alex Lessie working in Trench Z at the altar.

Micromorphology slide of sediment from a Byzantine Harbour in Turkey.

The Bryant Bannister Building, home of the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research.

Timbers from Hagia Sophia in Istanbul dating to 534 AD cross-match with material from the Yenikapi harbor to strengthen the Aegean dendrochronological record in the problematic first millennium AD

Frost damaged cells in a bristlecone pine caused by a sudden short term climatic perturbation linked with a volcanic eruption.

Dynasty XII - Boat Burial - 10 m long - 6 to 8 tons imported cedar (courtesy The Egyptian Museum, Cairo)

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Introducing CMATE

The Consortium for Mediterranean Archaeology and the Environment has developed from a long tradition of interdisciplinary collaboration between leading scholars in anthropology, dendrochronology, radiocarbon analysis and geosciences at the University of Arizona.

By combining our different perspectives and methodologies for reconstructing the past, we aim to gain a greater and more highly resolved picture of past human experience in the cradle of Old World civilizations. We seek to study the chronological relationships between societies against the background of an ever-changing environment; To understand the true impact and timing of sudden, short term catastrophic events on human populations and to answer questions of survival and collapse poignant to our modern world.

“ …archaeological knowledge is not created in a finished, definitive state but refined over iterative cycles of interaction between a number of partners.”

  • Research by members of CMATE

    Please explore some examples of the research projects being undertaken by members of the Consortium for Mediterranean Archaeology and the Environment.

  • Linking the Dendrochronology of Northern Europe and the Mediterranean