Chapter 2 : chronology and stratigraphy of the valley systems

Abstract

Adequate absolute dating is critical to understanding the past, especially where data concerning environmental changes from different sites are being compared, as chronology is often the only reliable way to compare evidence from multiple contexts. The archaeological chronology of Malta is becoming increasingly well resolved and this sets up a challenge – how can we obtain comparable high-resolution chronologies of environmental change in the Maltese Islands? The Maltese landforms pose significant barriers to achieving this goal, as much of the available palaeoenvironmental evidence is limited to cores in alluvial or shallow-marine sediments, which contain materials that have been subject to much re-working through time. In this chapter, we introduce and discuss the various techniques that the FRAGSUS Project has brought to bear on this problem, and review the main approaches used. [excerpt]