Avellino Eruption - Date of The Eruption

Date of The Eruption

The date of the Avellino Eruption remains to be determined with a precision greater than about 500 years within the framework of the Early/Middle Bronze Age. A range of 2000 BC — 1500 BC includes the great majority of estimates. Ample opportunity to obtain Carbon-14 dates from charcoal and soil buried under the deposits has existed and still exists. Sporadic Carbon dating continues, with each scientist claiming to have obtained "the latest." Consistency with previous and subsequent work remains elusive. Since a real and very precise calendar date of the eruption must have existed, variation in estimations can only be the result of limitations to the carbon-dating method, which, given a plenitude of reliably emplaced samples, can only produce a date within a window of roughly 500 years in a maximum elapsed time of roughly 4000 years or 1/8 (12.5%).

According to Giardino, estimations fall into two ranges: 1880-1680 BC and 1684-1535 BC. He prefers the earlier, tagging it as "the end of the Early Bronze Age."

A study published in 1990 by Vogel and others suggested that the Avellino Eruption was responsible in part for the climatic disturbances of the 1620s BC. The latter were verified by "tree-ring series" and "ice-core layers." The authors had just obtained carbon dates of 3360±40 BP, or 1617-1703 calibrated BC. They were suggesting a coincidence of a number of eruptions, such as the Santorini explosion, that destroyed Minoan civilization. The hypothesis remains unverifiable a generation later, due to the overall imprecision of the dates.