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Documenta Praehistorica XLVIII (2021)
Introduction
This paper has two goals. The empirical goal is to
re-evaluate the dating of two important Early Neo-
lithic sites in the Aegean, i.e. basal Knossos and Nea
Nikomedeia. The methodological goal is to show
how more precision and, crucially, accuracy may be
achieved when a Bayesian dating analysis employs
constraints on deposition durations obtained through
archaeological analysis.
Section 1 introduces the broader context for the re-
evaluated sites: the 7th millennium BCE in South-
western Asia and Southeastern Europe. Sections 2
and 3 are technical, and describe the new Bayesian
dating analyses of the previously available data for
basal Knossos and Nea Nikomedeia, respectively.
Section 4 discusses the archaeological consequences
of obtaining these new dates with respect to the
Including explicit priors on phase duration in Bayesian
14C dating> re-evaluating the dates for basal Knossos
and for Nea Nikomedeia (Early Aegean Neolithic)
Igor Yanovich
Institute of Linguistics, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, DE
igor.yanovich@uni-tuebingen.de< igor.yanovich@gmail.com
ABSTRACT – Bayesian modelling of radiocarbon dates directly integrates information obtained
through archaeological analysis. Here, I explain how to add known information/reasonable as-
sumptions about the length of a deposition phase, using the example of date sequences from two
Early Neolithic communities in the Aegean whose dating has been hotly debated, i.e. basal Knossos
(Crete) and Nea Nikomedeia (Northern Greece). The consequences of the re-evaluation of their dates
are discussed for the broader picture of the Neolithisation in the Aegean and for the chronology of
the regional use of stamps.
IZVLE∞EK – Bayesovo modeliranje radiokarbonskih datumov neposredno vklju≠uje podatke, ki jih
pridobimo z arheolo∏ko analizo. V ≠lanku pojasnjujem, kako dodati znane podatke / utemeljene
predpostavke o dol∫ini faze odlaganja na primeru ≠asovnih zaporedij dveh zgodnjeneolitskih najdi∏≠
v Egejskem morju, o katerih se je ∫e intenzivno razpravljalo, in sicer o temeljih v Knossosu (Kreta)
in Nei Nikomedeiji (Severna Gr≠ija). Razpravljam tudi o posledicah ponovne ocene teh datumov za
∏ir∏o sliko neolitizacije v Egejskem morju in za kronologijo regionalne uporabe pe≠atnikov.
KEY WORDS – radiocarbon dates; Neolithic; clay stamps; Knossos; Nea Nikomedeia
KLJU∞NE BESEDE – radiokarbonski datumi; neolitik; glineni pe≠atniki; Knossos; Nea Nikomedeia
Vklju;evanje nedvoumnih apriornih verjetnosti v ;as trajanja faz v Bayesovem
14C datiranju> ponovna ocena datumov iz najdi[; Knosos in
Nea Nikomedeia (zgodnji egejski neolitik)
DOI> 10.4312\dp.48.3
Including explicit priors on phase duration in Bayesian 14C dating> re-evaluating the dates for basal Knossos and for Nea Nikomedeia ...
203
no sign of an actual pottery tradition is to be seen
until the second half of the 7th millennium, when
the Yarmukian and several other regionalized cultu-
ral entities apparently develop, and are already using
pottery technology (Garfinkel 2014; Goring-Morris,
Belfer-Cohen 2019). At the spectacularly large site
of Sha‘ar Hagolan in the Jordan valley in the second
half of the 7th millennium, complex village planning
was practiced and a rich material culture developed,
characterized by considerable public works and an
art that follows a very strict and formalized canon
(Garfinkel 2019). In sum, while the overall trajec-
tory towards greater involvement with ceramic tech-
nology and an apparent rise in symbolic production
is in common with the northern part of the Fertile
Crescent, the local history of the southern Levant of
the 7th millennium is markedly different.
In Anatolia, things similarly depended on the spe-
cific region involved. In the Cilician plain, the local
pottery sequence of the 7th millennium has been
analysed as exhibiting a growing sophistication over
time, as well as regional connections (Balossi Re-
stelli 2006; 2017), but otherwise we still know very
little about the period, though new excavations at
Mersin-Yumuktepe promise to add considerably to
our knowledge (Caneva, Jean 2016.21–23). Across
the Taurus range to the northwest, some economies
included food production far earlier (Baird et al.
2018), but it is the 7th millennium BCE that sees the
rise of Çatalhöyük, one of the largest agglomerations
of its time, without anything comparable known in
broad picture of Neolithisation in the Aegean and
the chronology of the use of stamps/seals/pintade-
ras in the Aegean and Anatolia. Section 5 then con-
cludes this paper.
The 7th millennium BCE and the need for more
precise dating: an introduction 
The 7th millennium BCE was a dynamic and inter-
esting time in Southwestern Asia and Southeastern
Europe. In the Fertile Crescent, which had been
developing its food-producing Neolithic for several
millennia by that point, different and complex histo-
ries emerged during this concluding Neolithic phase.
In northern Levant and Upper Mesopotamia, the mil-
lennium’s beginning marks the adoption of pottery,
but its initial use hardly revolutionized the local life-
ways (Nieuwenhuyse, Campbell 2017); it is only in
the centuries mid-7th millennium that pottery be-
comes more abundant, and towards 6250 BCE true
seals and actual sealings appear in Upper Mesopota-
mia (Nieuwenhuyse, Akkermans 2019). Interesting
social processes surely accompanied these develop-
ments, but the evidence is for now insufficient to
see which exact ones. To use the settlement pattern
as an example, Olivier Nieuwenhuyse and Peter Ak-
kermans (2019) argue that it is currently unclear
whether there is a retraction of settlement at the
time when pottery is introduced and then gains in
variety and quantity, or it is rather the case that not
all communities actually had any use of pottery until
much later into the period. Be that as it may, in the
last quarter of the 7th millen-
nium decorated pottery and
rapid stylistic innovation
spread across vast expanses
in this region, plausibly asso-
ciated with new norms re-
garding mobility and hospita-
lity (Nieuwenhuyse et al.
2016).
Meanwhile in southern Levant
a very different history was
unfolding. The later 8th mil-
lennium BCE was character-
ized by the appearance of
‘mega-sites’ in the Jordanian
highlands, while in the early
7th millennium the popula-
tion of such sites apparently
disperses into smaller places
(see Rollefson 2019 with ref-
erences). Unlike in the north,
Fig. 1. Selected sites mentioned in the text: Kn Knossos; NN Nea Nikome-
deia; Ma Mavropigi Filotsaïri; Pa Paliambela Kolindrou; Re Revenia Ko-
rinou; Ul Ulucak Höyük; Çu Çukuriçi Höyük; Bar Barcın Höyük; Bad Bade-
magacı Höyük; Ça Çatalhöyük; Yu Mersin-Yumuktepe. Base map made
with R (R Core Team 2020) and Natural Earth, @ naturalearthdata.com;
site locations from the DEFC database (defc.acdh.oeaw.ac.at), Karami-
trou-Mentessidi et al. (2015), Adaktylou (2017).
Igor Yanovich
204
Central Anatolia. The existence of this large popu-
lation centre was not ahistorical either: for example,
its pottery usage undergoes significant changes as
the millennium goes by (Özdöl 2012), while archi-
tectural practices change roughly over the course of
its third quarter (Brami 2017.102–105). Further
west still, in the Turkish Lake District it is not yet
clear what exactly the first half of the 7th millenni-
um looked like,1 but in the second the region def-
initely experiences the flourishing development of
archaeologically recoverable material culture (see
overview in Duru, Umurtak 2019.251–269). At the
very western edge of Anatolia, close to the Aegean
coast of Turkey, new agriculturalist sites also appear,
including Ulucak (Çevik, Erdogu 2020) and Çukuri-
çi (Horejs 2017), with long stratified sequences span-
ning the last three quarters of the 7th millennium.
In northwestern Anatolia, in comparison, on current
evidence Neolithic occupation starts a little later,
with the earliest known such site in the region, Bar-
cın Höyük, beginning slightly before the middle of
the millennium (Gerritsen et al. 2013). After this
start, the Eastern Marmara region appears to fea-
ture continuous development through the second
half of the 7th millennium, developing its material-
cultural peculiarity, which can be described as a sin-
gle ’Fikirtepe culture’ (Özdogan 2013) despite consi-
derable variations between settlements (Karul 2019;
Özbal, Gerritsen 2019).
Turning from Turkey to Greece, two regions are
known to have been rather densely populated by
agriculturalist communities by the end of the 7th mil-
lennium: Macedonia and Thessaly (see Reingruber
et al. 2017 and Urem-Kotsou, Kotsos 2020, respec-
tively, for current chronology and references). De-
spite a number of recent and active excavations ad-
ding to the evidence in Macedonia, it is still hard to
discern, behind inter-site variability, unambiguous
patterns of development other than in specific do-
mains: (uncontestable) pottery changes and (appar-
ent; the review of evidence in Reingruber (2008)
still remains relevant) changes in ‘small find’ catego-
ries such as figurines and stamps/seals/pintaderas
(henceforth I’ll use ’stamps’ without prejudice to the
function, after Çilingiroglu 2009). However, as these
very specific categories of evidence are particular-
ly likely to be preserved for archaeological investi-
gation, it is often through their comparison that we
can identify prehistoric relations between different
sites and regions. To use stamps as an example, in
the Turkish Lake District’s Bademagacı, they first oc-
cur in a stratified context from Level 3 (Duru, Umur-
tak 2019.207, Pl. 123), i.e. apparently in the third
quarter of the 7th millennium. In contrast, in Ulucak,
near the Western Turkish coast, stamps occur from
level Vb, in the last quarter of the 7th millennium
(Çevik, Erdogu 2020).2
To better understand the actual histories revealed
by such archaeologically visible phenomena, we
need to know the precise chronological relations
between the sites. It should be stressed that chrono-
logy is not the simplistic hunt for who or which re-
gion was ’the first’: if one is interested in local pride,
each region has in fact quite a lot to offer; and if one
is interested in understanding human histories, then
there are plenty of questions more relevant than
who was the first: ’what exactly?’, ’how fast?’, ’toge-
ther with what or who?’ and ’why now?’ are just
some that are of far more consequence. Understand-
ing the prehistoric chronology well is a prerequisite
for answering most of these.
Yet gaining precise chronological knowledge is not
easy. The natural-scientific method of choice for
the Neolithic is radiocarbon dating. But while beau-
tiful in its principle of tracking a uniformly decay-
ing radioactive element, in practice radiocarbon da-
ting is not simple. As with any physical experiment,
plenty of things can go wrong, sometimes at no
fault of the experimenter; thus a single measure-
ment is never an unquestionably reliable datum.
The experimental techniques of radiocarbon dating
continue to be developed and further refined (to
appreciate this constant process of improvement,
see, for instance, Bird et al. 1999; Brock et al. 2010).
So are the data and algorithms needed for ’calibrat-
ing’ radiocarbon measurements: turning physical
measurements into calendar years based on a cali-
bration curve, with a new set of curves published
just recently (Reimer et al. 2020).
Further aspects of modelling can also be complicat-
ed. Wood samples may come from older wood that
stopped carbon exchange with the outside much be-
1 As far as radiocarbon chronology goes, the case for occupation in the first half of the 7th millennium basically rests on one date
from Bademagacı level 8; though such early occupation is quite possible given the excavated evidence at this and other 7th mil-
lennium Lake District sites, future research will hopefully be able to add more to our knowledge.
2 Earlier layers of Neolithic sites are often only investigated in small exposures; but in these two cases, the relevant exposures of
the earlier layers have been on the order of 100m2 at Bademagacı (deduced from Duru, Umurtak 2019.162–163), and c. 135m2
at Ulucak (Çevik, Vuruskan 2020.102), and thus the absence of stratified stamp finds in these cases may well be due to their ge-
nuine absence.
Including explicit priors on phase duration in Bayesian 14C dating> re-evaluating the dates for basal Knossos and for Nea Nikomedeia ...
205
fore the tree was cut and used. Animals, including
humans, may have drawn through their diet carbon
from different sources with different radiocarbon
concentrations. This is often labelled ’reservoir ef-
fects’, where the reservoir refers to the carbon reser-
voir from which the carbon comes. Unfortunately,
local reservoirs may have rather different qualities,
and even the measurements of present-day marine
reservoir properties can be rather scarce. For in-
stance, in the whole of the Aegean Sea we only have
three point measurements, at Nafplio, Piraeus and
the Dardanelles/Çanakkale strait. The latter two are
closer to each other in numerical value than to the
Piraeus measurement, even though Piraeus is much
closer to Nafplio than Dardanelles/Çanakkale is,
http://calib.org/marine/. This all underscores just
how non-trivial the issue is.
Finally, the dated sample may contain contaminants
with a different carbon age, which in some cases just
cannot be eliminated by any known procedure, and
– what is even worse – with possibly no indication
that something went wrong other than an unrealis-
tic measurement (van Klinken, Hedges 1998), so if
we are not lucky enough recognize it as unrealistic,
we will just happily accept the wrong date.
In practice, difficult though these problems are, they
can be largely counteracted by well-designed dating
programs, generating not just single measurements,
but longer series of dates sampled through the stra-
tigraphy. The sheer number of dates in large series
makes outliers, whatever the ultimate reason for
their appearance, much easier to see and thus allows
them to be weeded out by analysts. Perhaps even
more importantly, when the dates are modelled
jointly in a Bayesian framework, the stratigraphic
information about dated samples can constrain the
results in non-trivial and useful ways.
Bayesian modelling of archaeologically relevant ra-
diocarbon measurements, pioneered by John C. Nay-
lor and Adrian F. M. Smith (1988), has in the last
few years become a nearly-standard method among
prehistorians. Within the subfield of Aegean prehi-
story specifically, the importance of such statistical
modelling is frequently acknowledged (e.g., Rein-
gruber 2020) and practiced (e.g., Maniatis 2014).
The point of Bayesian analysis is to incorporate the
meaningful information gained by archaeological re-
search into the process of obtaining calendar-age
dates from 14C measurements. This often allows
time estimates to become much more precise, but
also, importantly, more correct than if we ignored
the actually known information and only relied on
’agnostic’ calibration of single dates and their me-
chanistic and/or highly subjective combination (Bay-
liss et al. 2007).
However, it is common that in practice not all of the
actually known information gets incorporated in
the results. The purpose of the current contribution
is to explain how to include one particularly com-
mon type of information we can obtain from inter-
preting excavation results: the rough duration of a
particular deposition phase of the site to be dated.
I discuss the issue with the help of two case stud-
ies, of basal Neolithic levels at Knossos on Crete (of-
ten labelled ’Aceramic’ levels), and of the Early Neo-
lithic settlement of Nea Nikomedeia in Greek Mace-
donia. Douka et al. (2017) and Maniatis (2014) are
the most recent dating analyses for these two, but
neither includes the available prior knowledge about
the apparent duration of the relevant deposition
phase.
There may be different reasons for choosing not to
specify the likely duration of a deposition phase in
advance. In fact, for many common applications this
duration would be among the main variables of in-
terest: the fundamental work of introducing good
Bayesian dating practice to prehistorians (Bayliss
et al. 2007) is concerned exactly with gaining infer-
ences about phase duration.3 But for the two case
studies I report, there are arguably good grounds for
making very specific assumptions about the duration
of deposition.
In the current literature, basal Knossos gets assigned
to anywhere from the later 8th to the middle of the
7th millennium BCE. But when properly modelled
we obtain a fairly precise estimate of the 66th cen-
tury BCE, which allows us to see how this short-
lived occupation fits into the developments in the
broader region. For Nea Nikomedeia, existing esti-
mates are equally discordant and wide: from 6600/
6400 BCE to the end of the 7th millennium. In this
case, the reported radiocarbon measurements clear-
ly contain anomalies that cannot be explained with-
out a new dating program for the site. Still, on pre-
sent evidence we can place this site’s existence as a
50–150-yearly period somewhere roughly between
3 Similarly, the purpose of the Gaussian Monte Carlo wiggle-matching (GMCWG) method (see, for example, Benz et al. 2012.299–
300) is to get duration and date inferences in the case when we cannot independently estimate the length of a phase.
Igor Yanovich
206
6300 and 6050 BCE, excluding both the highest
and the lowest opinions in the literature. Both re-
evaluations have consequences for our picture of
the Neolithisation of the Aegean. For Nea Nikome-
deia, I also discuss the consequences of the re-evalu-
ation for the temporal distribution of stamps in the
Aegean and Anatolia.
Accepting the specific proposals below for basal
Knossos and Nea Nikomedeia will crucially depend
on accepting the estimates of the phase duration
that I accepted, as well as on the available radio-
carbon measurements and on my choices regarding
which ones to use. This is as it should be: if our re-
spective understandings of the archaeological evi-
dence differ; if our sets of data differ; or if we make
a different choice of which data to discard as errone-
ous – this all may result in different date estimates
as well. The key here is to first incorporate as much
of our actual firm beliefs about the site into our dat-
ing analysis as possible; and second, to be explicit
about our assumptions, so that they can be subse-
quently challenged or adjusted, as future evidence
or future analysis may demand. To simplify future
re-evaluation of my results, the original analysis files
for OxCal (Bronk Ramsey 2009), as well as the re-
sult files, are all provided as online supplementary
material. The analysis files include the uncalibrated
dates discussed and used, coded in the OxCal for-
mat.4
Re-evaluating basal Knossos dates conditional
on a very short occupation
The basal, and for all we know initial, occupation of
Knossos, directly overlaying the bedrock, has been
claimed to exist in three small areas AC (11 by 5m),
X and ZE (Evans 1994), where it was labelled Stra-
tum X; and in Trench II in the 1997 rescue excava-
tions on the area of 1.5 by 1.5m, where it was lab-
elled levels 38–39 (Efstratiou et al. 2013). Small
areas X and ZE of Arthur Evans’s excavations are re-
latively far from the AC area, and contain architec-
tural remains; I follow Agathe Reingruber (2008)
in rejecting Evans’s identification of the basal layer
in AC with those at X and ZE, given that no dates
are available from X and ZE, and that the 1997 ex-
cavators did not find similarities with ZE either (Ef-
stratiou 2013.27). Note that Evans himself connect-
ed the architectural remains in ZE and X to Stratum
IX rather than X (Evans 2008.19–20). Judging from
Stratum IX 14C dates, it represents a much later oc-
cupation. In contrast to X and ZE, trench II is at
most 10m away from Evans’s area AC (Efstratiou et
al. 2013.2, Fig. 1.1), and I accept the 1997 excava-
tors’ identification of their levels 38–39 with Evans’s
Stratum X. The cited excavators label these basal
layers ‘Aceramic’; I will refer to them as ‘basal Knos-
sos’ to avoid using potentially theoretically charged
terminology (see, for example, Reingruber 2017 for
a review).
The early radiocarbon dates were compiled by Evans
(1994), and re-published with added information
on their context by Yorgos Facorellis and Yannis Ma-
niatis (2013), who also published further dates from
the 1997 excavations. Finally, Katerina Douka et al.
(2017) added still more dates on samples from both
the 1997 and Evans’s excavations, and modelled
them statistically using OxCal.
The apparently very early dates from basal Knossos
have deservedly received much attention in the lite-
rature, but their exact interpretation remains con-
tested. Evans (1994.1) writes of “some time near
the end of the 8th, or in the earlier part of the 7th
millennium BC”; Nikos Efstratiou (2013.29) of ‘‘the
first settlers of Knossos around 7000 BC” for the
initial Knossos occupation; Liora Kolska Horwitz
(2013.173) says the dates “place the Stratum X oc-
cupation [=basal Knossos – Author] at the end of
the eight millennium calBC”; Facorellis and Mania-
tis (2013) say that “radiocarbon dating has estab-
lished absolute dates for the beginning of the Neo-
lithic in Crete at 7030–6780 BC”; Maniatis (2014.
209) writes that Knossos was established “around
7000 BC”; Çiler Çilingiroglu (2016.Tab. 1) places
Knossos X among a set of sites within “7000–6600
calBC”; Reingruber (2008.121) discusses the earlier
radiocarbon dates and placed Knossos “X and the
upper [obviously “lower” is meant – Author] bor-
der of IX during the middle of the 7th mill. BC”.
In its turn, the latest Bayesian modelling in Douka’s
et al. (2017) study does not discuss the authors’ in-
terpretation of their analyses explicitly, despite the
fact that the estimates obtained differ between each
other. The dates on the map in Douka et al. (2017.
Fig. 6) give for Knossos ‘6910–6480/6970–6590’,
which are called in the caption “the numerical age
estimates for the earliest Neolithic occupation
(95.4% probability)”. An examination of the plot in
4 All results in this paper were obtained using OxCal 4.4 (Bronk Ramsey 2009), run on the Oxford servers made available to the
archaeological project, for which I am very grateful. IntCal20 (Reimer et al. 2020) was used as the default calibration curve, and
the results were selectively checked against IntCal13 (Reimer et al. 2013), as reported in the text.
Including explicit priors on phase duration in Bayesian 14C dating> re-evaluating the dates for basal Knossos and for Nea Nikomedeia ...
207
this figure and of supplementary Tables S2 and S3
(available at http://dx.doi.org/10.4312/dp.48.3)
shows that this should be read as the estimates for
the beginning of the earliest occupation, rather than
for its whole length, as could be erroneously infer-
red. In the main text, we read: “Knossos was first
occupied at the beginning of the seventh millen-
nium BC (6900–6600 BC at 95.4% probability’’
(O.c. 317)). Finally, regarding the modelled duration
of occupation, Douka et al. (O.c. 315) state: “the life-
span of the Knossos founder village was short; it
seems to have lasted from a few years up to a ma-
ximum of 400 calendar years”. This must refer to
explicit measurement of the phase’s duration in Ox-
Cal, not directly shown in the paper.
Before we turn to modelling ourselves, it is useful to
review the findings for basal Knossos from area AC’s
Stratum X and Trench II’s levels 38–39. In area AC,
we have numerous “grain from a field of bread-
wheat” (Evans 1994.4), i.e. Triticum aestivum (Sar-
paki 2013) (still surprising today at this early time
and this place); and “a row of stake-holes, and the
carbonised remains of some of the actual stakes
were found to be still in the holes in which they
had been set” (Evans 1994.5). There were child bu-
rials dug into this layer, but their simultaneity is not
as secure (Reingruber 2008). Bone tools, a figurine,
beads and shell pendants are reported by Evans
(1994.5). Animal bones from Evans’s excavations
were studied by Valasia Isaakidou (2004), divided
by excavation area, and include cattle, pig and
sheep/goat (with counts in her Fig. 6.1) for basal
Knossos in AC. The lithic industry is described in
James Conolly (2008), apparently for the combined
sample from AC, ZE and X, which is unfortunate.5
Conolly reports signs of resource stress in the as-
semblage, while Evans (1994.5) reports the obsidian
to be Melian.
The small 1.5 x 1.5m area of Trench II from the 1997
excavations added to Evans’s earlier finds “some
pieces of obsidian and dissolved unbaked mud-
brick” (Efstratiou et al. 2013.19); more concretely,
“four pieces of obsidian – small flakes and broken
blades – and one flint blade”, with the obsidian pre-
sumed to be Melian (Efstratiou 2013.28). The 1997
archaeobotanical sample presents multiple other ce-
reals and pulses (Sarpaki 2013.69–73). Summing
up, there is considerable evidence of human activi-
ty at basal Knossos, including harvesting grain and
various other forms of work with animal and stone
tools. However, the overall layer is thin, and is com-
patible with a short-lived occupation of several years
(perhaps a single harvest season!), as defended by
Reingruber (2008.127) and accepted as a real pos-
sibility by Douka et al. (2017).
The radiocarbon dates for basal Knossos include five
measurements from grain and five from charcoal,
which includes two dates from the same stake from
Evans’s Stratum X. Below I report four possible mo-
dels for those dates, generated by two factors: (i)
whether to include only dates from grain (a short-
lived, and therefore more reliable material for dat-
ing associated events), or dates from both grain and
charcoal; and (ii) whether to leave the length of ba-
sal Knossos with an implicit prior (similarly to Dou-
ka et al. 2017), or impose on it an informative prior
corresponding to the hypothesis of a short occupa-
tion of just several years; specifically, I defined a log-
normal prior with the mean below two years, but
allowing, in principle, much longer spans, albeit
with low probability. Figure 2 illustrates the analy-
ses made only on grain dates, and shows consider-
ably different inferences about both the duration
and timing of basal Knossos.
The first thing to note is that the two analyses in Fi-
gure 2 provide very similar posterior estimates for
the five grain samples. The choice of prior on the
phase length thus did not have a dramatic effect on
individual date inferences. However, that choice had
just such an effect on the inferences about the phase’s
length and overall timing. If we use the implicit
prior, also used by Douka et al. (2017), the phase’s
start ranges from 6704 to 6491 cal BC at the 95%
HPD (that is, the highest posterior density), but with
a restricted phase length this becomes a shorter
6598 to 6484 cal BC. The length of the phase, Figure
3, is anywhere between zero and 250 years (95%
HPD) with the implicit prior, but is below five years
with my informative prior at the same HPD. The in-
ferred durations (black) on the right in Figure 3 clo-
sely follow the prior’s shape (light shaded).6 This
means that it is ultimately the prior, and not the data,
5 In the light of this, the suggestion of continuity between basal Knossos and much later overlying Neolithic layers (Conolly 2008.
87) is unfortunately suspect.
6 It is not clear to me why negative durations are reported at the lower end, as the OxCal construction of a phase with two boun-
daries should ensure a non-negative phase length. Perhaps this is due to a difference in default resolutions used by the program
when running and checking constraints on the one hand, and when reporting on the other; in this case, “–2” should really be
read “0”.
Igor Yanovich
208
which effectively drives the
phase-duration inferences.
Thus the seemingly harmless
implicit prior in fact represents
non-trivial beliefs about the
phase length that we incorpo-
rated into Bayesian analysis. It
is instructive to explain how
this happens. The assumptions
we made for the implicit prior,
similar to those in Douka et al.
(2017), but also in most Baye-
sian analyses of Aegean prehi-
storic chronology known to
me, are (i) that our measured
grains belong to one phase,
and (ii) that their deposition
was at a uniform rate. It is this
uniform rate assumption that
keeps the boundaries of the in-
terval from going to infinity,
while still allowing them con-
siderable freedom, as we effec-
tively allow a rather long time
to pass before the first of the
grains was grown and charred.
Now that we see the effects of
choosing between the two pri-
ors on phase length, let us go
back to the archaeological in-
terpretation. I introduced the
log-normal prior favouring a
very short phase length on the
basis of a hypothesis of very-
short occupation, which may
prove to be wrong in the fu-
ture. Remaining agnostic about
that specific hypothesis, do we
have other reasons to choose
between the two priors? I would
argue yes. Note that the first three dates in Figure 2
stem from three grains of the same cache studied by
Halbaek from AC Stratum X (Douka et al. 2017).
The other two dates are from seeds from level 39 of
Trench II, which in principle may or may not belong
to the same season’s crop. Thus whatever our beliefs
about basal Knossos as a whole, we should accept
almost simultaneous actual deposition for the three
dated grains from Stratum X, and perhaps for all
five, as Trench II was at most 10m away from area
AC and the seeds from it could well belong to the
same deposition event. To see if choosing three or
five seeds makes a difference, I checked whether a
model featuring just the first three dates from Fi-
gure 2 with the short-length prior provided differ-
ent inferences from those with five grain dates. The
smaller three-date model (see the supplementary
material at http://dx.doi.org/10.4312/dp.48.3) in-
fers similarly prior-driven phase durations, but is
less specific about when the short occupation occurr-
ed: roughly 6590 to 6500 cal BC at the 68% HPD,
and 6630 to 6470 cal BC at the 95% HPD.
Let us spell out the substantive consequences of ac-
cepting either prior. If we choose the informative
short-occupation prior for the grains, it is clear what
Fig. 2. Basal Knossos analysed with dates from grain only. Above: no
additional prior on phase length. Below: log-normal prior on phase
length with μ = 0.5, σ = 0.5 (thus with the mean below two years, but a
long thin tail allowing much longer durations). Here and in all sub-
sequent analyses: (i) in plots, the lower interval lines correspond to
95% HPD (highest posterior density), upper lines, to 68% HPD; (ii) the
corresponding OxCal scripts and result tables can be found in the on-
line supplementary material at http://dx.doi.org/10.4312/dp.48.3
Including explicit priors on phase duration in Bayesian 14C dating> re-evaluating the dates for basal Knossos and for Nea Nikomedeia ...
209
we are trying to date: the event of handling that
crop, which may or may not coincide in duration
with the overall basal Knossos occupation. If we
choose the implicit prior that does not restrict the
phase length, then we get inferences compatible
with the Knossos occupation existing for decades,
if not centuries, before the three/five grains were
grown, and similarly after that event. Archaeologi-
cally speaking, it is not at all clear what we are ac-
tually measuring with a phase defined in this way.
While it is reasonable to disagree which prior is
more appropriate for inferring the dates for the
whole of basal Knossos, only the short prior is ap-
propriate for dating the deposition of the grains. So
even if we choose to believe the occupation could
last a long time, we should still, on present evidence,
place the event of growing the crop into the 66th
century BCE (if we assume all five grains to be from
one crop) or into the roughly one and a half centu-
ry between 6630 and 6470 BCE (if we only accept
the grains from AC).
Let us now consider what happens when we also in-
clude dates from charcoal, as seen in Figure 4. As we
could now expect, the two models provide very diffe-
rent estimates for the phase date and duration. On
the implicit prior on the left, basal Knossos ranges
between roughly 6850 and 6450 cal BC at 95% HPD,
with a duration anywhere between zero and 370
years. On the short-occupation prior, we infer a 95%
HPD of about 6650 to 6600 cal BC for the phase, and
a short duration, strongly induced by the prior.
Given the higher apparent precision of the model
with the short-duration prior, one might wish to pre-
fer the all-dates model with the short prior over the
grains-only one. The satisfaction of using all avail-
able data might tempt one to accept one of the mo-
dels in Figure 4, whichever accords better with one’s
beliefs. But I argue that closer examination of the
quality speaks against those choices. Even the visu-
al inspection of Figure 4 shows that the combined
(BM-124)+(BM-278) and the OxA-9215 charcoal dates
show poor agreement between the individual mea-
surement (light shaded and outlined) and the in-
ferred distribution (dark shaded). Indeed, the agre-
ement indices A for the two resulting calibrated
dates are low in both models (see the results in the
table form in the supplementary material at http://
dx.doi.org/10.4312/dp.48.3). Furthermore, on the
seemingly more precise short-duration-prior model
on the right in Figure 4, two of the grain dates show
very poor agreement, namely Beta-325103 and OxA-
28380. In other words, some data is not in very good
agreement with the models. I conclude from this that
it is preferrable to use the grain-only models for ba-
sal Knossos.
There are several possible reasons for the problem.
First, it could be that the charcoal samples do not
actually come from the same deposition event that
affected the grains. This is perhaps unlikely for the
stake from which the old dates BM-124 and BM-278
came from, as one of the dated grains is reported to
be associated with that stake (Facorellis, Maniatis
2013.Tab. 10.2). For the other charcoal samples,
theoretically they may have been produced by dif-
ferent fires. Second, the old-wood effect may well
be in play; the two charcoal samples from the burned
stake were considered by Evans to be unlikely come
from an old tree, as “the oak was probably only 15–
20cm in diameter” (Evans 1994.5, fn. 11), but its
old date, when calibrated in isolation (i.e. the out-
Fig. 3. The duration of basal Knossos from grain-only analyses in Figure 2. Left: no additional prior on
phase length. Right: with log-normal prior on phase length with μ = 0.5, σ = 0.5; the shaded area illustra-
tes the shape of the prior, the solid black line, inferences; it is clear from the comparison that the infer-
ences closely follow the prior. Note the difference in scale on the x-axis between left and right.
Igor Yanovich
210
line in Figure 4), is rather imprecise,
and similarly for OxA-9215. The
three other charcoal dates are mea-
sured considerably younger (over a
century younger in uncalibrated BP),
but even those measurements at face
value appear to predate those from
the grains. This is consistent with the
dated wood having being old, and
the whole basal occupation being
very short; but we cannot on present
evidence exclude the hypothesis of
a longer light occupation, either.
Finally, we cannot exclude the pos-
sibility that some of the measure-
ments, especially from early dating,
are objectively in error.
To conclude this case study: I argue
that it is more appropriate to model
the date of basal Knossos using only
the measurements from grain; that
the radiocarbon evidence is compa-
tible with basal Knossos being a
short-lived occupation of just sever-
al years, perhaps one season, though
our radiocarbon data in themselves
do not support this over alternatives;
and finally, that this basal occupation
happened specifically in the 66th cen-
tury BCE. On presently available evi-
dence, the reader may accept or re-
ject this proposal judging for herself
the merits of my reasoning. The ad-
vantage here is that this reasoning
was made explicit above and is thus
easy to evaluate independently.
Needless to say, it is also quite pos-
sible that in the future we will ob-
tain more hard evidence about the
basal occupation of Knossos, which
can then significantly affect our in-
ferences. But at least for the present
evidence we applied some important
model-checking steps: we checked
sensitivity to the phase-length prior
as recommended for priors in gene-
ral, e.g., by Christopher Bronk Ram-
sey (2009.347),7 and performed an
informal check of agreement of in-
7 For the proposed preferred analysis, that is the one incorporating only dates from grains and restricting the length of the deposi-
tion event, I also checked the effect of the calibration curve. Using IntCal13 (Reimer et al. 2013) instead of the current IntCal20
did not change the results significantly, resulting in slightly shorter HPD intervals for the start and end dates of the phase.
Fig. 4. Basal Knossos analysed with dates from grain and charcoal.
Above: no additional prior on phase length. Below: log-normal
prior on phase length with μ = 0.5, σ = 0.5. See the online supple-
mentary material at http://dx.doi.org/10.4312/dp.48.3 for
analysis scripts and tables.
Including explicit priors on phase duration in Bayesian 14C dating> re-evaluating the dates for basal Knossos and for Nea Nikomedeia ...
211
dividual radiocarbon measurements with the mo-
del (cf. Bronk Ramsey 2009.356).
Re-evaluating Nea Nikomedeia dates conditio-
nal on an occupation length of several genera-
tions
Until the last decade, it was a contentious issue
whether Greek Macedonia featured any Neolithic
sites before the last two centuries of the 7th millen-
nium BCE. The site of Nea Nikomedeia, in the south-
western corner of the Plain of Macedon, has been
central to the debate. The site was excavated in
1961–64, but has not yet received a full final publi-
cation: Gillian Pyke and Paraskevi Yiouni (1996) is
the final presentation of the stratigraphy, architec-
ture and the pottery, but for example lithics or small
finds, including among others the stamps that played
a role in the chronological discussions of Nea Niko-
medeia, have not yet been definitively published.
The set of radiocarbon dates for Nea Nikomedeia in-
cludes four dates on charcoal or on unknown mate-
rial made in the 1960s. The two earliest of which
have huge laboratory-reported standard deviations
and after individual-date calibration reach far into
the 8th millennium BCE – much earlier than the very
early, for Neolithic Greece, charcoal dates from ba-
sal Knossos. However, further dates on grain and
animal bone were obtained in the 1980s and 1990s
(Pyke, Yiouni 1996.195), and fall into the second
half of the 7th or even into the 6th millennium BCE,
and do not all agree well (see, for example, the dis-
cussion in Perlès 2001.108–109).
Different interpretations have been expressed in the
literature regarding the ordering of Nea Nikome-
deia. Representative examples include the following.
Maniatis (2014.Fig. 6) lists Nea Nikomedeia among
sites already existing between 6600 and 6400 cal
BC, while Perlès (2001) broadly orders the site to
roughly 6400–6000 cal BC (that is, to her definition
of the Early Neolithic in Greece). Urem-Kotsou and
Kotsos (2020) provide the range 6400–6200 cal BC
for the site. Reingruber (2008.394–396), consider-
ing the apparently temporally advanced elements of
the material culture, their similarity to early 6th mil-
lennium BCE sites in the neighbouring Republic of
North Macedonia, and the then-lack of clearly com-
parable early sites in Greek Macedonia, orders the
start of Nea Nikomedeia at between 6150 and 6100
cal BC. Significantly, when discussing the radiocar-
bon evidence Reingruber and Laurens Thissen (2017.
Region IId) note the apparent inconsistency in our
data about this site (see http://www.14sea.org/3_IId.
html#site1), with several alternative interpretations
of the evidence arguably remaining possible.
In recent years, the research context of Nea Niko-
medeia has changed due to an enormous expansion
of knowledge about the initial phases of the Neoli-
thic in Greek Macedonia and bordering regions.
While research is still ongoing and we lack final re-
ports, it seems now beyond doubt that Greek Ma-
cedonia featured Neolithic settlements in the sec-
ond half of the 7th millennium BCE, including most
likely that millennium’s third quarter and not just
its end. Most preliminary information so far has
been published from the site of Mavropigi-Filotsaïri
in the Kozani prefecture, less than 100km east from
Nea Nikomedeia (Karamitrou-Mentessidi et al.
2015). The extensively excavated site of Paliambela
Kolindrou, roughly 30km southeast of Nea Nikome-
deia, features early dates (see Maniatis 2014) and
shows evidence for rather complex landscaping be-
haviour at the initial settlement episode; important-
ly, Nea Nikomedeia-like houses succeed the small
pit dwellings of the initial phase of the site (see Kot-
sakis 2019 for a preliminary report). Rescue exca-
vations at Revenia in the early 2000s uncovered
another early pit-dwelling site, presented with an
extensive catalogue of finds by Foteini Adaktylou
(2017). Besides pit structures, there appears to be a
later, but poorly preserved phase of above-ground
dwellings at Revenia (Adaktylou 2017).8 Taken
together, the recently obtained evidence suggests an
early presence of Neolithic settlements in Macedonia,
and against that background Nea Nikomedeia is no
longer exceptional.9
Still further inland from Greek Macedonia, we arrive
to the Albanian Korçë basin, where the early Neoli-
8 Numerous dates for different pits – on charcoal, animal and human bone, and seeds – are reported by Adaktylou (2017.Appendi-
ces 12, 22, 36, 42, 55, 72, 74, 102, 160, 163, 165, 168, 187, 195, 197, 242). The dates show some spread, but mostly appear to
point towards the third quarter of the 7th millennium BCE. Interestingly, stamps are present in several pits (Adaktylou 2017.Ap-
pendices 378–379), and also ‘earplugs’, with the lion’s share of the latter in only two pits, Pit 44 (15 objects) and Pit 7 (seven
objects) (Adaktylou 2017.Section 6.5.5.6, Appendices 375–377).
9 Urem-Kotsou and Kotsos (2020) is an up-to-date review of the sites in Central Macedonia, including the Early Neolithic ones; Ma-
niatis (2014) published modelled dates from several of these, including Paliambela and Mavropigi; see also Bonga (2019.162–163),
discussing the archaeological associations of some of the Mavropigi dates, and mentioning a possibly early date OxA-31863 from
charred grain that seems not to have been formally published yet.
Igor Yanovich
212
thic sites of Vashtëmi and Pod-
gori (Korkuti 1995.32–57) show
some decorated-ceramic affini-
ties with Mavropigi, some 100–
150km southeast (Bonga 2017).
These Albanian sites might also
be early (Allen, Gjipali 2014),
though the radiocarbon dates
stem from cores and are not in
direct association with archaeo-
logical finds, and in any event re-
main isolated dates rather than
series (see Ruka 2018 for a criti-
cal overview). The chronological
and spatial resolution of the cera-
mic associations also remain to
be clarified, as Lily Bonga (2017)
also discusses. In particular, a tra-
dition appearing very similar to
such polychrome decoration is a
distinct part of the ceramic reper-
toire at Tell ∞avdar in Western
Bulgarian Thrace, almost 500km
to the northeast of Mavropigi; cf.
a polychrome ochre-on-red sherd
in (Bush 1984.81, Fig. 80c), and
several sherds described gener-
ally as “dark-brown or red” out-
lined by “thin white bands or
thickly placed white dots” (Ge-
orgiev 1981.87–88), and repre-
sented at least in the V (Geor-
giev’s Fig. 46) and VI (Fig. 47
middle right, 48 bottom left) ho-
rizons, and possibly later (the
preliminary report does not spe-
cify the exact duration of this va-
riety’s appearance). The motifs
appear, at least at first sight, ra-
ther similar to those at Mavropi-
gi (Bonga 2017.Fig. 5). Unmo-
delled calibrated dates from ho-
rizons V and VI comfortably span
the 62nd–57th centuries BCE at 68%, (Reingruber,
Thissen 2017), while Mavropigi’s fall exclusively in-
to the 7th millennium (Maniatis 2014. Fig. 3).10
Summing up, earlier dates for Nea Nikomedeia
around the middle of the 7th millennium BCE as sug-
Fig. 5. Nea Nikomedeia: all dates reported in Pyke and Yiouni (1996);
prior on the phase’s duration: Normal(100,25).
10 For further context, in the Korçë-basin site Vashtëmi from the older excavations there are just two pieces featuring red and ochre
together (Korkuti 1995.49), and they have no white outline in contrast to the pieces found in Podgori. Thus this specific ‘poly-
chrome’ tradition is only observed in Podgori (Korkuti 1995.37, Pl. 7.6; also Andoni 2017). For ∞avdar, Georgiev (1981.87–88)
writes that such polychrome decoration similarly appears in other settlements of the Karanovo I-Kremikovci I geographical group,
and was also excavated at Grade∏nica in Northwestern Bulgaria.
gested by Maniatis (2014) would not look as isolat-
ed in the broader region today. It is thus all the more
important to revisit the Nea Nikomedeia dates and
model them jointly. Catherine Perlès (2001) and
Reingruber (2008) discuss which Nea Nikomedeia
dates can or should be treated as outliers, and thus
Including explicit priors on phase duration in Bayesian 14C dating> re-evaluating the dates for basal Knossos and for Nea Nikomedeia ...
213
ignored. Maniatis (2014) reports
dates after apparent individual
calibration (as opposed to joint
modelling), and does not analyse
the most suspicious outliers; This-
sen and Reingruber (2017.134)
report the dates together with
their individual calibrations at
the 68% HPD, but unlike Mani-
atis combine the dates from grain
and corresponding humic acid,
which apparently correspond to
the same samples. I am not aware
of an actual joint modelling of
the Nea Nikomedeia dates.
To model the dates appropriate-
ly, we now need to discuss the
site’s archaeological evidence.
Nea Nikomedeia is a tell site, pos-
sibly with a long occupation his-
tory, but cleared for taking earth
for road-fill down to its early
Neolithic occupation (Rodden
1996.5–7). The remaining cultu-
ral layer was at most 20cm at a
large portion of the site, but up
to 70cm closer to the centre of
the mound. The architectural re-
mains have been tentatively eva-
luated by Pyke to correspond to
three stratigraphic phases, which
“appear to follow in swift suc-
cession” (Pyke 1996.48). She
also reports that there was no
apparent change in small finds.
Yiouni (1996.103–104) studies
the pottery of the site, and con-
cludes that it is remarkably uni-
form across the stratigraphy, also suggesting “only a
short time span”. While Pyke and Yiouni (1996) re-
frain from voicing a calendar-years estimate for the
duration of the studied (period of the) village, I ac-
cept here the agreeing estimates of 50–150 years by
Stelios Andreou et al. (2001.323) and around 100
years (Reingruber 2008.395).
We now turn to defining a Bayesian dating model.
I will go through the analyses I performed tutorial-
style, in the order I did them, with the aim to demon-
strate how one might proceed in practice. Consi-
dering the apparent short span of the occupation
and its internal homogeneity, I model all dates as
coming from a single deposition phase. Given that
we do not have additional stratigraphical informa-
tion on the relative relationships between the sam-
ples, I did not place any internal order on them. Fi-
nally, in agreement with the chosen prior duration
estimate, I set an informative prior on the phase’s
duration, namely, Normal(100,25), which results in
the 95% probability assigned to the duration(s) be-
tween 50 and 150 years, with a peak at 100 years.
The results of such an analysis, taking into account
all available dates including the likely outliers, are
visualised in Figure 5 (see the online supplementary
material at http://dx.doi.org/10.4312/dp.48.3 for re-
sults in the table format and the analysis file). This
served as an exploratory analysis to see how all the
different dates fit together.
Fig. 6. Preferred model for Nea Nikomedeia: dates reported in Pyke and
Yiouni (1996) without dates on charcoal and on unknown material,
without the outlier combined date on grain, Triticum monococcum (OxA-
1603)+(OxA-4280); prior on the phase’s duration: Normal(100,25).
Igor Yanovich
214
What is obvious already from a visual inspection of
Figure 5 is that the two dates accepted in the liter-
ature as outliers, Q-655 and GX-679, clearly look as
such. This is no surprise: the plot on the right in
Figure 5 shows that this set of dates drives the in-
ferred length of the phase (dark shaded) in the di-
rection of longer compared to the prior Normal
(100,25) (light shaded), but not by much. There is
no way to fit those implausibly early dates Q-655
and GX-679 well into such a short time span.
Another clear outlier is the combined date from Tri-
ticum monococcum: it is too young to fit in. With-
out knowing the archaeological context of the origi-
nal sample, it is hard to say what exactly went
wrong, but given that the mound seems to have ori-
ginally had layers overlaying the studied early Neo-
lithic occupation, an intrusion remains a possibility,
as do all other reasons that can lead to outlying
measurements. To my mind, it is clearly justified to
exclude these Triticum monococcum samples as
well as the two old charcoal dates if our goal is to
date Nea Nikomedeia’s studied occupation phase. It
is not that those dates are necessarily ‘wrong’, but I
believe it safe to conclude that if they are technical-
ly right, they are dating something else than the oc-
cupation phase of interest.
In addition to those exclusions, I subjectively prefer
to exclude the two remaining charcoal dates P-1202
and P-1203A. It is not that they are obviously out of
range of the rest of the dates on potentially shorter-
lived material, and another analyst might prefer to
include them as well (and we will see below what
happens if we do).
The results are visualised in Figure 6. We can see
from the plot on the left that our prior assumption
about the length of the deposition in effect excludes
considerable probability mass for most measure-
ments, both on the older and younger sides. Agre-
ement indices A, however, are high except for the
two combined dates from Triticum dicoccum (A=
88%) and Hordeum vulgare (A=66%) (see the table
with the results in the supplementary material at
http://dx.doi.org/10.4312/dp.48.3). For comparison,
the grain-only model for basal Knossos with a short-
deposition prior (on the right in Figure 2) featured
agreement indices all over 100%. Alone, the level of
agreement seen in the analysis in Figure 6 would be
a moderate cause for concern.
However, when we consider the phase-duration dia-
gram on the right in Figure 6, we can see that there
is indeed a serious problem. The prior we put on the
phase’s duration is the same as it was in Figure 5,
and is again light-shaded in this plot. But now we
can see that it is bi-modal rather than uni-modal: in
addition to the expected peak around 100 years,
there is also a high peak close to 0. Note that this
new peak strongly disagrees with our prior: our
prior puts 95% of all probability into the interval of
50 to 150 years! Bayesian inference needs to see
really strong reasons to override this. At the same
time, we see that it has not shifted all the posterior
probability mass to this unexpected peak: if it did,
this would be a reason to consider if our prior could
be in error, in which case we would need to adjust
our analysis of the site accordingly. However, there
is still a clear peak agreeing with the prior, so it is
not that our assumptions of 50–150 years are fully
incompatible with the data at hand. But of course
only one of the two alternatives can be right: either
Nea Nikomedeia had only a very short deposition
phase, close to 0 years, or the deposition continued
for several generations. Since there are good archa-
eological reasons to believe the latter option (after
all, we are dealing with three building phases!), it
is the unexpected peak that must be in error. But
that peak is there for a reason in our analysis: there
Fig. 7. Enlarged plots for combined dates from Triticum dicoccum and Hordeum vulgare from Figure 6.
Including explicit priors on phase duration in Bayesian 14C dating> re-evaluating the dates for basal Knossos and for Nea Nikomedeia ...
215
must be strong enough ’pressure’ from the data to
force its existence. The only conclusion left is that
there is a problem with our data in this analysis. It
cannot all be quite correct.
What could have gone wrong? Visual inspection of
the left plot in Figure 6 suggests that the main prob-
lem might be caused by the Triticum dicoccum and
Hordeum vulgare dates. However, checking their
independent calibrations (light shaded) and poste-
rior calibrations (dark shaded), Figure 7, we can see
that the problem is very subtle: it looks like the two
dates are well compatible with each other. Just by
looking at them, it is hard to predict there would be
a problem.
Yet further close inspection of the analysis results
shows the problem is actually very serious. Consider
the posteriors for the start and end boundaries of
our deposition phase, as shown in Figure 8. Note
three spikes on each of the plots. They are clearly
in the same temporal positions for the two phases.
This shows that they correspond to the unexpected
peak for the phase’s duration close to 0 years: in-
deed, if the start and end boundaries are both se-
lected from, say, the first spike, the resulting dura-
tion would be very short. This is really a ’wait a mi-
nute’ moment for our analysis. Suppose for a mo-
ment that a very short phase really makes sense,
given the data. But how could the data then favour
three distinct, very specific datings for that very
short phase? Why these dates? Examining the inde-
pendent calibrations, choosing these particular three
Fig. 8. Enlarged plots for the start and end boundaries from Figure 6.
time points does not make sense. And indeed, it is
nothing more than an artefact of our analysis, un-
fortunately. In reality, the true mathematical poste-
rior in its short-phase part must be ‘smooth’, without
noticeable spikes. It is just that our run fails to ex-
plore this true posterior properly. We can check that
this diagnosis is correct by running the model again:
the prediction is that the spikes will appear in diffe-
rent places on each run. This is, indeed, the case.11
In fact, the first time when I ran the analysis in Fi-
gure 6, OxCal completely failed to notice the unex-
pected peak, and I – mistakenly – believed the ana-
lysis was just fine. It was only when I ran it for the
second time that the short-phase peak was discov-
ered. MCMC is among the best options we have for
performing Bayesian inference in complex models,
but it faces various difficulties with posteriors of par-
ticular shapes. These difficulties are not absolute,
and would have been properly dealt with if we
could run MCMC for literally infinite time. As this
is not really an option, we have to live with the fact
that our convergence diagnostics sometimes think
we are fine while in fact we have not yet obtained
a good approximation of the true posterior. In par-
ticular, when there are several regions of the mo-
del space divided by an area of very low probability
– as the true posterior of our model apparently is –
it can sometimes lead to problems.12
Let us check if going with a different set of data or
a different prior might convince us to prefer a dif-
ferent model. This will also serve as a sensitivity
11 To check this, one can examine the files with suffixes “start1.pdf” and “end1.pdf” in the supplementary material available at
http://dx.doi.org/10.4312/dp.48.3, or run the script on OxCal to produce new, and different, results.
12 As a technical note, this particular case is probably so hard for OxCal because the short-phase area of the probability space is a
very thin crest, but moving along it is somehow difficult for the sampler. Rather than exploring this crest in full, the sampler
appears to jump off it into the other, prior-compliant, area of the posterior instead. It would appear that on the technical level
OxCal’s engine has a difficulty changing two highly correlated variables at the same time.
Igor Yanovich
216
check: we need to know how ro-
bust the inferences of the model
in Figure 6 are to the assump-
tions we put into it. I tested two
such models: (i) the same as in
Figure 5, but with two non-obvi-
ous outlier charcoal dates inclu-
ded, as seen in Figure 9; and (ii)
the same as in Figure 5, but with
an implicit prior on the phase’s
length, similar to the Knossos
case study above, with results
shown in Figure 10.
The model in Figure 9 stems
from reasonable assumptions;
its only difference from my pre-
ferred model is that it uses two
dates on charcoal that are not
obvious outliers. But the prob-
lem of the unexpected short-
phase peak remains the same.
This is not surprising if the prob-
lem was induced by the combi-
nation of date estimates we used
in Figure 6: they are a subset of
the data in Figure 9. Still, the re-
sults could have been otherwise:
for example, by including the
older charcoal dates P-1202 and
P-1203A, that I chose to leave
out, we could have been able to
identify some other dates as
probable outliers. Furthermore,
having performed this analysis,
we can check how much our re-
sults for inferring the time of
Nea Nikomedeia deposition de-
pends on those charcoal dates.
Figure 10 shows what happens
if we modify the model in Figure 6 by lifting our ex-
plicit prior imposing the duration of 50–150 years
at 95% probability, and use instead the implicit prior
induced by the assumption of a uniform rate of in-
dividual deposition events. As expected, under this
implicit prior some durations very different from
50–150 years are judged possible: both short dura-
tions below 50 years, but also long durations over
two centuries. The 95% HPD interval for the phase
duration is from 0 to 350 years (see the table-format
result in the supplementary materials at http://dx.
doi.org/10.4312/dp.48.3). It thus includes both du-
rations that are too short and too long, given what
we know about the site.
It is also useful to rephrase this result in the follow-
ing way: our radiocarbon data do not by themselves
suggest a length of roughly 50–150 years; the ex-
plicit prior on this duration genuinely adds infor-
mation to the Bayesian analysis that could not be
recovered from the 14C measurements themselves.
In fact, the right plot in Figure 10 demonstrates the
radiocarbon measurements that we have are compa-
tible with a wide range of possible durations. Since
we can be confident that Nea Nikomedeia existed
roughly 50–150 years, it is crucial to include this as
prior information. The model in Figure 10 is to be
rejected, just as certainly as the model in Figure 5
that features obvious outliers.
Fig. 9. Nea Nikomedeia: dates reported in Pyke and Yiouni (1996)
without two outlier dates Q-655 and GX-679 and the outlier combined
date on grain, Triticum monococcum (OxA-1603)+(OxA-4280); prior
on the phase’s duration: Normal(100,25).
Including explicit priors on phase duration in Bayesian 14C dating> re-evaluating the dates for basal Knossos and for Nea Nikomedeia ...
217
Table 1 summarizes how the
choice of model affects our esti-
mates of the chronological posi-
tion of Nea Nikomedeia. Compa-
ring our preferred model, Figure
6, with the others, we note the
following. All models result in
wide 95% HPD intervals, which
is partly due to the high standard
deviations of the measurements
themselves (see the scripts in the
supplementary material for those
at http://dx.doi.org/10.4312/dp.
48.3), partly to a small plateau in
the 62nd century BCE (see the ca-
libration curve in Figure 8), and,
quite likely, partly also due to
problems with the measurements
themselves. The model with an
implicit prior on phase duration,
seen in Figure 10, differs from the
others by providing the widest,
four-century-long interval into
which it orders Nea Nikomedeia.
This model is to be rejected as it
is inconsistent with our knowl-
edge about the site. Further, the
model in Figure 5 infers a short-
er interval than our preferred
model. It thus seemingly offers
better precision. But as discussed
above, it includes obviously prob-
lematic measurements, and is
therefore also to be rejected. Fi-
nally, our preferred model and
the model in Figure 9, which
keeps the reasonable looking
charcoal dates in, largely agree: they both place Nea
Nikomedeia within a c. 250-year-long interval, and
position their intervals very close to each other,
roughly between 6300 and 6050 cal BC. Our infer-
ences are thus not strongly sensitive to whether we
keep or discard the old dates from charcoal P-1202
and P-1203A. Such robustness is, generally speaking,
a welcome result: good inferences should not depend
too much on leaving out this or that specific obser-
vation. However, this does not cancel the problem
inherent to our data that led to the short-phase-du-
ration peak in both Figures 6 and 9. In other words,
we have to reiterate the concern about the inconsi-
stency of the dates and the analysis of archaeological
evidence voiced by Reingruber and Thissen (2017.
Region IId).
To conclude, on currently available
evidence the occupation of Nea Niko-
medeia, of length 50–150 years,
should be placed between roughly
6300 and 6050 BCE at 95% HPD.
This implies that in Thessalian ter-
minology (Reingruber et al. 2017),
Nea Nikomedeia falls into EN II, pos-
Fig. 10. Nea Nikomedeia: the same as in Figure 6, but with an implicit
prior on the phase’s duration.
95% HPD
Fig. 3, all data 6317 to 6130 cal BC
Fig. 6, outliers and all charcoal out 6286 to 6041 cal BC
Fig. 9, outliers out, some charcoal in 6303 to 6057 cal BC
Fig. 10, as Fig. 6 but with implicit prior on lenght 6391 to 5991 cal BC
Tab. 1. The interval within which the 50–150-year occupation of
Nea Nikomedeia should fall, according to four different models.
Igor Yanovich
218
sibly touching the transitional EN III/ MN I. The
early dates in Maniatis (2014.Fig. 6) are then unwar-
ranted, but the estimate of a 6150–6100 cal BC pro-
posed by Reingruber (2008) may well be too late.
The occupation does not appear to be particularly
early in the Thessalian EN, but does not have to be
at the very end of the 7th millennium either.
Discussion: Aegean Neolithisation and the chro-
nology of stamps
More precise dating is not a goal in itself, and it can
be helpful for archaeological interpretation. In this
section, I describe the consequences we can draw
from the dating re-evaluations above for two topics:
the broader picture of Neolithisation in the Aegean
region, and the spatio-temporal distribution of stamps
in the Aegean and Anatolia.
The dates for basal Knossos previously given in the
literature allowed one to place it very broadly: it
could have been contemporaneous with the very
earliest pottery sites in northern Mesopotamia (late
8th/very early 7th millennium BCE), or with the trans-
formations of the Central Anatolian Neolithic around
and after 6500 BCE. Our re-evaluation has placed
basal Knossos firmly into the 66th century BCE, and
this has many implications. First, it appears that the
people who planted Triticum aestivum and created
the Knossos basal layer were operating after agri-
culturalist sites such as Ulucak and Çukurici had been
founded near the Western Anatolian coast. It follows
that there was a non-negligible diversity in the Ae-
gean agricultural practices towards the end of the
first half of the 7th millennium, with different sets of
crops exploited at different sites. At the same time,
the movements of the basal-Knossos group also pre-
date the significant changes that the Central Anato-
lian Neolithic undergoes in the third quarter of the
millennium (cf. Brami 2017). The Aegean of the se-
cond quarter of the 7th millennium must have al-
ready been a dynamic and interesting place, before
the appearance of Neolithic communities in North-
western Turkey or the significant changes at Çatal-
höyük.
For Nea Nikomedeia, our re-evaluation implies that
this community was not a particularly early one in
the region, and in particular it appears later than
some other sites in Greek Macedonia such as Mavro-
pigi or Paliambela (Maniatis 2014). However, some
aspects of Nea Nikomedeia’s material culture make
a more precise determination very interesting: it is
not only important who, or which site, was ‘the
first’. One such aspect is the use of stamps, with nu-
merous examples preserved in Nea Nikomedeia (e.g.,
Rodden 1965.86). At the large and materially ad-
vanced site of Çatalhöyük in Central Anatolia, the
earliest stamps appear in Level VII (Türkcan 2013.
240), dated to the 66th century BCE (Cessford et al.
2005), but the majority of the corpus (see Türkcan
2005; 2013) comes from the higher levels. In West-
ern Anatolia, in contrast, we only have stratified in-
stances of stamps later in the 7th millennium: in the
third quarter in the Lake District’s Bademagacı (Du-
ru, Umurtak 2019.207, Pl. 123), and in the fourth
quarter at Ulucak (Çevik, Erdogu 2020). In Greek
Macedonia, Mavropigi features at least six stamps,
but they have only been preliminarily published,
and we thus cannot determine which period of this
apparently long-lived site they come from (Karami-
trou-Mentessidi et al. 2015.62, Fig. 42). In Revenia
Kolinou, several seals were found in a pit that has
been radiocarbon dated by several measurements
into the third quarter of the 7th millennium (Pit 7;
Adaktylou 2017.42–46). To this picture, we can now
add the rich use of stamps at Nea Nikomedeia as
ordered into the late third or earlier fourth quarter
of the 7th millennium BCE. This timing is similar, on
present evidence, with that of the stamps of the Tur-
kish Lake District, and might predate their use on
the Western Anatolian coast. The study of seal mo-
tives and their exchange between areas would fur-
ther benefit from better temporal resolution for in-
dividual examples.
Conclusion
My purpose in this paper has been to show how we
can incorporate substantive assumptions about
phase duration, stemming from archaeological work,
into Bayesian modelling of radiocarbon dates. Using
already available information about basal Knossos
and Nea Nikomedeia, we were able to reach the fol-
lowing chronological conclusions, based on 95%
HPD:
● The event of the deposition of charred grain in
the basal Knossos levels occurred within the 66th
century BCE (Fig. 2, right).
● The (studied part of the) village of Nea Nikome-
deia probably existed between 6300 cal BC and
6050 cal BC, thus falling mainly into Thessalian
EN II, and possibly also the beginning of the tran-
sitional EN III/MN I (Fig. 6). However, caution is
in order because the available measurements were
clearly demonstrated to be problematic when con-
sidered together.
Including explicit priors on phase duration in Bayesian 14C dating> re-evaluating the dates for basal Knossos and for Nea Nikomedeia ...
219
The present re-evaluations of the dates for basal
Knossos and Nea Nikomedeia may have to be ad-
justed in the future – in fact, I hope we will even-
tually get more data that would allow that, espe-
cially for Nea Nikomedeia. They are also conditio-
nal on particular modelling choices that I made and
described. While I consider them reasonable, you
are free to disagree and consequently to accept re-
sults from a different model instead. It is important
to bear in mind that in statistical analysis there are
modelling choices that are obviously wrong, and
then there are legitimate, but incompatible alterna-
tives.
As we discussed above, both basal Knossos and Nea
Nikomedeia received very different dating interpre-
tations in the previous literature. Those interpreta-
tions, in turn, played an important role in the discus-
sions about the earliest Neolithic in the Aegean. Ra-
diocarbon dating has the appeal of supposed objec-
tivity. But its results in fact depend, often crucially,
on the assumptions we put into our models. We
could observe this in our two case studies. Moreover,
even if we do not explicitly build a Bayesian model,
but interpret dates individually, this also amounts
to adopting very particular – and frequently very
wrong! – assumptions about the archaeological rea-
lity from which our samples came.13
What Bayesian modelling of dates forces us to do is
to make our assumptions explicit, so that we can
compare, discuss, and crucially, improve them when
needed. However, in order for future research to
be able to do this, we also need to publish all the
details of our models, and not just their results. This
is why I provide all OxCal analysis files as an on-
line supplement, so that they can be re-run (with ne-
wer calibration curves, for example) or modified (for
instance, with new data). I suggest every archaeolo-
gical paper engaging in statistical modelling of dates
does the same. Such sharing is of considerable im-
portance, because as we start modifying priors our
figures no longer straightforwardly summarize the
model. I suggest that our standards of reporting the
model itself should be as strict as for reporting the
radiocarbon data (Bayliss 2015).
I would like to end by noting that even though de-
signing and interpreting models requires effort (just
as noted already by Bayliss et al. 2007), the techni-
cal overhead on implementing them is really not
large. Specifically, in OxCal it only requires adding
one line to the analysis script to put a prior on one
phase’s length:  “phase-length”, “end”, “start”, N(100,
25).
This line, from my Nea Nikomedeia model, orders a
new variable “phase-length”: to be created, which (i)
records, in the OxCal output, the interval between
“end” and “start”, which are just my names for the
two boundaries of the single phase in the model;
and (ii) puts the Normal(100,25) prior onto this
quantity. To record the length, but not restrict it im-
plicitly, as in Figure 10, we simply omit the last ar-
gument N(100,25). Needless to say, other priors can
be mentioned in this argument, to appropriately
capture the substantive knowledge won through
archaeological analysis. I hope that the ease with
which the technical side can be conquered will lead
to more radiocarbon modelling employing this pos-
sibility in future research.
13 It is also worth noting that the reasonable statistical-philosophical alternatives to being a careful Bayesian (Buck, Meson 2015),
is certainly not doing nothing, that is, only looking at one’s data informally. It may be being a convinced and careful frequentist,
but that would require no less care in designing and performing the needed statistical tests. There is, unfortunately, no escape
from the complexity of doing careful science!
I am very grateful for the comments on the text from
Phillip Endicott and Agathe Reingruber, and our dis-
cussions of these chronological issues. The comments
on the first version of this paper by two reviewers
have improved it very significantly. All possible errors
remaining are, of course, solely my own, as are the
subjective opinions expressed. The reported research
was supported by DFG under projects 391377018 and
FOR 2237, which is hereby gratefully acknowledged.
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Igor Yanovich
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