M. G. L. Baillie

M. G. L. Baillie
Queen's University Belfast | QUB · School of Geography, Archaeology and Palaeoecology

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152
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Introduction
Skills and Expertise

Publications

Publications (152)
Article
Linked to major volcanic eruptions around 536 and 540 CE, the onset of the Late Antique Little Ice Age has been described as the coldest period of the past two millennia. The exact timing and spatial extent of this exceptional cold phase are, however, still under debate because of the limited resolution and geographical distribution of the availabl...
Article
Back in the 1990s suggestions were made that simply accumulating random radiocarbon dates for some mundane human activity (hearths, for example, being ubiquitous in archaeology) might give a measure of human population through time. The current paper (McLaughlin this volume) represents a version of that thought made manifest. It was clear in the 19...
Article
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By linking ice-core volcanic horizons with precisely dated frost damage in bristlecone pines, the authors have revised the dating of the principal Greenland ice-core chronologies back to c. 2000 BC. This revision has implications for establishing an absolute calendar date for the Bronze Age eruption of Thera. Three volcanic horizons (1653, 1627 and...
Article
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Supplementary Materials referenced in McAneney and Baillie "Absolute tree-ring dates for the Late Bronze Age eruptions of Aniakchak and Thera in light of a proposed revision of ice-core chronologies" Antiquity 93, 367 (2019); 99-112 accessible at https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2018.165
Data
This paper and supplementary material can be accessed via Cambridge Core on the following link https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/absolute-treering-dates-for-the-late-bronze-age-eruptions-of-aniakchak-and-thera-in-light-of-a-proposed-revision-of-icecore-chronologies/0E06053BFD90C1EA58ED8822814DC6F8/share/a8735201d4b03db20bfa...
Article
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The original version of this Article contained an error in the Data Availability section, which incorrectly read ‘All data will be freely available via https://www.ams.ethz.ch/research.html.’ The correct version states ‘http://www.ams.ethz.ch/research/published-data.html’ in place of ‘https://www.ams.ethz.ch/research.html’. This has been corrected...
Article
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Though tree-ring chronologies are annually resolved, their dating has never been independently validated at the global scale. Moreover, it is unknown if atmospheric radiocarbon enrichment events of cosmogenic origin leave spatiotemporally consistent fingerprints. Here we measure the 14C content in 484 individual tree rings formed in the periods 770...
Article
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Climate model projections suggest widespread drying in the Mediterranean Basin and wetting in Fennoscandia in the coming decades largely as a consequence of greenhouse gas forcing of climate. To place these and other “Old World” climate projections into historical perspective based on more complete estimates of natural hydroclimatic variability, we...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Much evidence exists for the major climate anomaly c2200-2000 BC. In this paper, we demonstrate that precisely dated Irish bog oaks record this climatic event, which appears to begin abruptly in 2206 BC and last until around 1900 BC. However, it might be unwise to ignore the precisely dated, abrupt environmental downturn that occurs some 150 years...
Conference Paper
Much evidence exists for the major climate anomaly c2200-2000 BC. In this paper, we demonstrate that precisely dated Irish bog oaks record this climatic event, which appears to begin abruptly in 2206 BC and last until around 1900 BC. However, it might be unwise to ignore the precisely dated, abrupt environmental downturn that occurs some 150 years...
Article
The most recent major eruption at Rabaul was one of the largest known volcanic events at this complex system, having a volcanic explosivity index (VEI) rating of 6. The eruption generated widespread pumice lapilli and ash fall deposits and ignimbrites of different types. The total volume of pyroclastic material produced in the eruption exceeded 11...
Article
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Good archaeology relies on ever more precise dates - obtainable, notably, from ice-cores and dendrochronology. These each provide year-by-year sequences, but they must be anchored at some point to real historical time, by a documented volcanic eruption, for example. But what if the dating methods don't agree? Here the author throws down the gauntle...
Article
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In 2012 Plummer et al., in presenting the volcanic chronology of the Antarctic Law Dome ice core, chose to list connections to acid layers in other ice cores and also possible chronological coincidences between ice acid dates and the precise dates of frost damage, and/or reduced growth in North American bristlecone pines. We disagree with the chron...
Article
Full-text available
Various attempts have been made to link tree-ring and ice-core records, something vital for the understanding of the environmental response to major volcanic eruptions in the past. Here we demonstrate that, by taking note of the spacing between events, it is possible to clarify linkages between tree-response, as witnessed by frost rings in bristlec...
Data
Explosive volcanism resulting in stratospheric injection of sulfate aerosol is a major driver of regional to global climatic variability on interannual and longer timescales. However, much of our knowledge of the climatic impact of volcanism derives from the limited number of eruptions that have occurred in the modern period during which meteorolog...
Article
Full-text available
Explosive volcanism resulting in stratospheric injection of sulfate aerosol is a major driver of regional to global climatic variability on interannual and longer timescales. However, much of our knowledge of the climatic impact of volcanism derives from the limited number of eruptions that have occurred in the modern period during which meteorolog...
Article
Full-text available
In the course of building the 7000 year Belfast long oak chronology a series of depletion problems were encountered. These problems were overcome by 1984 when the completion of the Long Chronology was announced. The solution to the bridging of the various ‘gaps’ in the Irish chronology lay in the use of long sections of oak chronology from Britain....
Article
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Acidity peaks in Greenland ice cores have been used as critical reference horizons for synchronizing ice-core records, aiding the construction of a single Greenland Ice Core Chronology (GICC05) for the Holocene. Guided by GICC05, we examined sub-sections of three Greenland cores in the search for tephra from specific eruptions that might facilitate...
Article
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The American GISP2 ice core provides records of ammonium and nitrate. These may be signatures of extraterrestrial bombardment. The two highest NH4/NO3 indices in some six millennia – between 4558 BC and AD 1427 – occur within a year of two Baktun transitions in the Mayan calendar; namely mean ice dates 2720.4 BC cf Baktun 1.0.0.0.0 (2719 BC), and 1...
Article
Full-text available
Volcanic acidity peaks provide critical reference horizons that enable the linkage of multiple ice cores in Greenland and have aided the construction of the Greenland Ice Core Chronology 2005 (GICC05). The source eruption of these acid layers can only be established though geochemical characterization of associated tephras, a process which then ena...
Article
The latter part of the Last Glacial Interval (LGI; 60,000 to 11,700 years ago) experienced a range of climatic and environment extremes. To elucidate the mechanisms of these changes requires records of past variability that are precisely dated and correlated on the same absolute timescale. However, despite decades of research, it is still not possi...
Article
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Tree-rings can provide continuous yearly paleoclimatic records for regions or periods of time with no instrumental climate data. However, different species respond to different climate parameters with, for example, some sensitive to moisture and others to temperature. Here, we describe four common species growing in Northern Ireland and their suita...
Article
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The IntCal04 and Marine04 radiocarbon calibration curves have been updated from 12 cal kBP (cal kBP is here defined as thousands of calibrated years before AD 1950), and extended to 50 cal kBP, utilizing newly available data sets that meet the IntCal Working Group criteria for pristine corals and other carbonates and for quantification of uncertain...
Article
Full-text available
Between 1968 and 1984, a 7272-yr oak chronology was constructed in Belfast, Northern Ireland, in order to provide a local calibration of the radiocarbon timescale. This single-minded exercise in chronology construction provided an exciting occupation for a group of researchers that can be likened to a race in which there was no guarantee of a finis...
Article
Full-text available
The IntCal04 and Marine04 radiocarbon calibration curves have been updated from 12 cal kBP (cal kBP is here defined as thousands of calibrated years before AD 1950), and extended to 50 cal kBP, utilizing newly available data sets that meet the IntCal Working ...
Article
Progress in the study of past climate change requires integration of historical documentation, tree-ring data and ice-core chemistry. Larsen et al. (2008) re-evaluate volcanic acid signals in the Dye-3, GRIP and NGRIP ice cores and identify large eruptions at 529 ± 2 and 533–534 ± 2; the latter claimed to cause the ‘dry fog’ of 536–537 and environm...
Article
Full-text available
It is well known that radiocarbon years do not directly equate to calendar time. As a result, considerable effort has been devoted to generating a decadally resolved calibration curve for the Holocene and latter part of the last termination. A calibration curve that can be unambiguously attributed to changes in atmospheric ¹⁴C content has not, howe...
Article
When astronomers tell us that there should have been numerous impacts from space during the last five millennia, when impact craters exist on land and more impacts can be assumed over the oceans, why are historians, archaeologists and palaeoecologists not diligently seeking evidence for these impacts, and their effects? This article reviews just so...
Article
The Northern Hemisphere cooling event 8200 years ago is believed to represent the last known major freshwater pulse into the North Atlantic as a result of the final collapse of the North American Laurentide ice sheet. This pulse of water is generally believed to have occurred independently of orbital variations and provides an analogue for predicte...
Chapter
The dates of a series of narrowest ring events (dates where numbers of long-lived oaks showed catastrophically narrow growth rings at the same time) have been identified in a long Irish oak tree-ring chronology (Baillie and Munro 1988). The dates were christened ‘marker dates’ because they were immediately noted to fall in clusters of information r...
Article
It is critical that a comprehensive terrestrial radiocarbon (14C) calibration curve is developed beyond 26 ka for high-precision calibration and correlation of climatic, environmental and archaeological records. Abundant sub-fossil New Zealand kauri (Agathis australis) wood, preserved in Oxygen Isotope Stage-2 and 3 peat swamps, provides an importa...
Article
New Zealand kauri (Agathis australis) is both long-lived and sensitive to climate so during the past two decades an extensive network of sites has been sampled for dendrochronological analyses. The network can be divided into three general groups based on the time period they cover—‘modern’ kauri (MK), late-Holocene kauri (HK) and ‘ancient’ kauri (...
Article
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The University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand and The Queen’s University of Belfast, Northern Ireland radiocarbon dating laboratories have undertaken a series of high-precision measurements on decadal samples of dendrochronologically dated oak (Quercus petraea) from Great Britain and cedar (Libocedrus bidwillii) and silver pine (Lagarostrobos co...
Article
SUMMARYA 2990 year floating tree-ring chronology has been constructed using bog oaks from low altitudes in the north east of Ireland. The basic building blocks of this chronology are site chronologies made from the ring patterns of trees from individual sites. The construction of site chronologies and of the 2990 year master chronology are describe...
Article
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The extent to which North Atlantic Holocene climatic perturbations influenced past human societies is an area of considerable uncertainty and fierce debate. Ireland is ideally placed to help resolve this issue, being occupied for over 9000 yr and located on the eastern Atlantic seaboard, a region dominated by westerly airflow. Irish bog and lake tr...
Article
Author Posting. © Elsevier B.V., 2006. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Elsevier B.V. for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Quaternary Science Reviews 25 (2006): 855-862, doi:10.1016/j.quascirev.2005.09.009. A recently published radiocarbon calibration curve ext...
Article
The extent to which North Atlantic Holocene climatic perturbations influenced past human societies is an area of considerable uncertainty and fierce debate. Ireland is ideally placed to help resolve this issue, being occupied for over 9000 yr and located on the eastern Atlantic seaboard, a region dominated by westerly airflow. Irish bog and lake tr...
Article
Full-text available
The Queen's University of Belfast, Northern Ireland and University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand radiocarbon laboratories have undertaken a series of high-precision measurements on decadal samples of dendrochronologically dated oak (Quercus patrea) and cedar (Libocedrus bidwillii) from Great Britain and New Zealand, respectively. The results sh...
Article
The temporal and spatial extent of Holocene climate change is an area of considerable uncertainty, with solar forcing recently proposed to be the origin of cycles identified in the North Atlantic region. To address these issues we have developed an annually resolved record of changes in Irish bog tree populations over the last 7468 years which, tog...
Book
This book explores the similarities between many characters in medieval Irish narratives and the appearance of comets.
Article
Full-text available
A new calibration curve for the conversion of radiocarbon ages to calibrated (cal) ages has been constructed and internationally ratified to replace IntCal98, which extended from 0–24 cal kyr BP (Before Present, 0 cal BP = AD 1950). The new calibration data set for terrestrial samples extends from 0–26 cal kyr BP, but with much higher resolution be...
Article
Tree rings representing the period from the mid-1950s up to 2001 were studied as part of an investigation of anthropogenic radionuclide input to terrestrial systems. A live specimen of Pinus sylvestris from the east coast of Ireland was felled, sampled and analysed for comparison with a similar tree felled close to the Atlantic seaboard on the west...
Article
The intercorrelation of palaeoclimate events from various studies is often hindered by a lack of precise chronological control. Tephra isochrons can overcome this problem by providing direct site linkages. This paper outlines a study of Holocene peat and diatomite deposits that accumulated within the floodplain of Lough Neagh, Northern Ireland. The...
Article
Full-text available
Radiocarbon dating has been rarely used for chronological problems relating to the Anglo-Saxon period. The "flatness" of the calibration curve and the resultant wide range in calendrical dates provide little advantage over traditional archaeological dating in this period. Recent advances in Bayesian methodology have, however, created the possibilit...
Book
Full-text available
The technical study of a Bronze Age sewn-plank boat discovered in Dover in 1992, dated to 1575-1520 cal BC (95% probability).
Article
Full-text available
New radiocarbon calibration curves, IntCal04 and Marine04, have been constructed and internationally ratified to replace the terrestrial and marine components of IntCal98. The new calibration data sets extend an additional 2000 yr, from 0–26 cal kyr BP (Before Present, 0 cal BP = AD 1950), and provide much higher resolution, greater precision, and...
Article
A new calibration curve for the conversion of radiocarbon ages to calibrated (cal) ages has been constructed and internationally ratified to replace IntCal98, which extended from 0–24 cal kyr BP (Before Present, 0 cal BP = AD 1950). The new calibration data set for terrestrial samples extends from 0–26 cal kyr BP, but with much higher resolution be...
Article
Full-text available
The radiocarbon calibration curve IntCal04 extends back to 26 cal kyr BP. While several high-resolution records exist beyond this limit, these data sets exhibit discrepancies of up to several millennia. As a result, no calibration curve for the time range 26–50 cal kyr BP can be recommended as yet, but in this paper the IntCal04 working group compa...
Article
The intercorrelation of palaeoclimate events from various studies is often hindered by a lack of precise chronological control. Tephra isochrons can overcome this problem by providing direct site linkages. This paper outlines a study of Holocene peat and diatomite deposits that accumulated within the floodplain of Lough Neagh, Northern Ireland. The...
Article
Because atmosphere 14C levels have not been constant through time, it is necessary to calibrate radiocarbon dates with known age radiocarbon datasets in order to compare paleorecords based on 14C ages and those based on other timescales. The need for a consensus calibration dataset was acknowledged by the radiocarbon community as a way of preventin...
Article
Full-text available
The dendrochronological data set of absolutely dated sub-fossil oak trunks from Irish, Dutch and German bogs consists of some 2600 series. They cover the period from 6000 BC to AD 1700. The distribution of the trees in time shows distinct changes in the frequency, germination and dying-off. One way to graphically represent germination and dying-off...
Article
Full-text available
Some 2600 bog oaks have been dated from German, Dutch and Irish bogs covering the period 6000 bc to ad 1000. The ring patterns of these bog oaks' are characterized by recurrent, long-term growth depressions. In addition, obvious changes in the temporal distribution of the bog-oak trunks throughout the Holocene are found. Both features were probably...
Article
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A highly resolved record of the depositional frequency of subfossil trees since 8263 bc in the valley of the River Main is presented. Different aspects of forest dynamics are explored including depositional anomal ies (phases of low or zero departures), changes in forest density based on tree growth trend classes (GTCs), and regeneration using mean...
Article
Full-text available
Introduction The European oak chronologies were completed back to 5000 BC during the 1980s, with demonstrable replication between Ireland and Germany using stepwise correlation through long English bog-oak series (Pilcher et al . 1984; Baillie 1995). Longer German oak chronologies extend the annual record back to 10,430 BP (Friedrich et al . 1999)....
Article
The future of dendrochronology with respect to the field of archaeology is forced to address several issues including legacies from the past involving the curation of data and physical specimens. Practical considerations involve the optimization of chronological coverage in both geographical and temporal dimensions to maximize future archaeological...
Article
Full-text available
We have conducted a series of radiocarbon measurements on decadal samples of dendrochronologically dated wood from both hemispheres, spanning 1000 years (McCormac et al. 1998; Hogg et al. this issue). Using the data presented in Hogg et al., we show that during the period AD 950-1850 the 14C offset between the hemispheres is not constant, but varie...
Article
Full-text available
Prognoses regarding future climate scenarios hinge on the predictive skills of climate models. They must produce reliable estimates of the future mean climate state as well as future climate variability about the mean, resulting from the interference between natural climate variability and anthropogenic perturbations of the climate system. Natural...
Article
Full-text available
The University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand and The Queen's University of Belfast, Northern Ireland radiocarbon dating laboratories have undertaken a series of high-precision measurements on decadal samples of dendrochronologically dated oak (Quercus petraea) from Great Britain and cedar (Libocedrus bidwillii) and silver pine (Lagarostrobos co...
Chapter
Full-text available
Holocene climate changes and variability in Europe are outlined on three time scales: long-term changes throughout the period as a whole; shorter-term fluctuations at centennial to millennial scales; and events with an annual to multi-decadal duration. Human population history in Europe during the Holocene is considered in relation to this history...
Chapter
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A number of “Narrowest-Ring” events have been identified in Irish oaks, with close to calendrial precision, back to 4500 y ago. The nature of these events will be impossible to establish unless putative causes can be precisely dated, independently of the tree-ring chronology. But even if such precise dating were available, alternative causes can be...
Article
Full-text available
The first meeting of the IntCal04 working group took place at Queen’s University Belfast from April 15 to 17, 2002. The participants are listed as co-authors of this report. The meeting considered criteria for the acceptance of data into the next official calibration dataset, the importance of including reliable estimates of uncertainty in both the...
Article
δD and δ13C analyses of cellulose nitrate from two modern Irish oak trees that form part of the 7400 year long chronology were carried out, covering a period of 123 years (1861–1983 A.D.) with a 5 year resolution so as to assess the potential of this long chronology for retrieval of palaeoenvironmental data. One of the trees (Q5293) showed signific...
Article
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This curious monument on the English coast has survived for more than four millennia.
Article
Recent advances in chronology, brought about by ice-core and tree-ring records, by tephrochronology and high-precision radiocarbon dating, have started to allow construction of what could be called the global picture. The process can only accelerate as more and more phenomena are dated. In the process a scheme will inevitably develop which will sep...
Article
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Excavations in the summer of 1998 have provided a solution to the problem of dating Northern Ireland's premier archaeological site and opened up new areas for speculation.
Article
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We present a selective review of tree-ring variability and inferred climate changes in Europe during the 16th century. The dendroclimatological evidence is assessed within the context of the last 500 years and some interpretational problems are discussed. The tree-ring evidence is compared with various non-dendroclimatic evidence. The body of evide...