Abstract The 13th century BC witnessed the zenith of the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean civilizations which declined at the end of the Bronze Age, ∼3200 years ago. Weakening of this ancient flourishing Mediterranean world shifted the political and economic centres of gravity away from the Levant towards Classical Greece and Rome, and led, in the long term, to the emergence of the modern western civilizations. Textual evidence from cuneiform tablets and Egyptian reliefs from the New Kingdom relate that seafaring tribes, the Sea Peoples, were the final catalyst that put the fall of cities and states in motion. However, the lack of a stratified radiocarbon-based archaeology for the Sea People event has led to a floating historical chronology derived from a variety of sources spanning dispersed areas. Here, we report a stratified radiocarbon-based archaeology with anchor points in ancient epigraphic-literary sources, Hittite-Levantine-Egyptian kings and astronomical observations to precisely date the Sea People event. By confronting historical and science-based archaeology, we establish an absolute age range of 1192–1190 BC for terminal destructions and cultural collapse in the northern Levant. This radiocarbon-based archaeology has far-reaching implications for the wider Mediterranean, where an elaborate network of international relations and commercial activities are intertwined with the history of civilizations.

Citation: Kaniewski D, Van Campo E, Van Lerberghe K, Boiy T, Vansteenhuyse K, Jans G, et al. (2011) The Sea Peoples, from Cuneiform Tablets to Carbon Dating. PLoS ONE 6(6): e20232. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0020232 Editor: Karen Hardy, Universidad Autonoma de Barcelona and University of York, Spain Received: January 24, 2011; Accepted: April 18, 2011; Published: June 8, 2011 Copyright: © 2011 Kaniewski et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Funding: This research was funded by the Paléomex-MISTRAL-INSU-CNRS Paléo2 MEDORIANT program, Research Fund Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (IDO program), and it presents research results from the IAP VI/34 (Interuniversity Attraction Poles Programme - Belgian Science Policy). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Materials and Methods Quality control on sample collection for 14C measurements was undertaken during excavations. Only samples originating in reliable contexts with clear association to meaningful ceramic assemblages and occupation levels were used. Samples were selected from primary contexts in May 2010, with an emphasis placed on short-lived samples (seeds or olive stones) (Fig. S2) and young branches (Fig. S3). All botanical macro-remains were sampled from the Middle-Late Bronze Age to the Iron Age II layers and subsequently determined using optical and scanning electron microscopes (Fig. S2). A total of 24 secured samples were dated by Beta Analytic (Miami, Florida) and Poznan Radiocarbon Laboratory (Poznan) using standard accelerator mass spectrometry 14C. An acid/alkali/acid pretreatment was performed and the radiocarbon ages were measured. The 13C/12C ratio and the conventional radiocarbon age were provided for each sample with two-sigma calendar calibration results. The weighted average value for the fire event termed Level 7A results from multiple measurements of the same ash layer from different key loci. The samples pooled in the matrix were statistically tested at a 95% confidence level using a χ2 test. The weighted average value was calibrated using Calib. Rev. 6.0.1 [22] and Oxcal 4.1 [23].

Acknowledgments The author would like to thank Prof. Hendrik J. Bruins and Dr. Nick Marriner for valuable comments on an earlier draft of this paper.

Author Contributions Conceived and designed the experiments: DK JB. Performed the experiments: DK EVC KVL TB KV GJ KN TO JB. Analyzed the data: DK EVC KN HW CM JB. Wrote the paper: DK EVC KN JB.