RESOLUTION “Radiocarbon, tree rings, and solar variability provide the accurate time scale for human evolution and geoscience” is a European Research Council (ERC) starting grant project directed by Prof. Sahra Talamo, for a total of 5-years (2019-2024).
The project will resolve the discrepancies caused by chronological and methodological differences between archives (terrestrial and marine), using the best-suited material to reconstruct the atmospheric 14C in the glacial period – tree rings.
The results of this work will be crucial in solving some of the most interesting puzzles in European prehistory, i.e. chronological interaction between the two most fascinating species in Europe (Neanderthals and Homo sapiens). With tree-rings, the resolution will be an order of magnitude higher compared the all other archives, and using the most recent advances in the AMS technique, we will obtain confidence intervals of only a few centuries in glacial times. This project will be of pivotal importance for key periods in human evolution and it will provide information on solar variability on decadal to centennial time scales reconstructed from production changes of 14C in tree rings and 10Be in ice cores.
Moreover, the multidisciplinary nature of the project promotes knowledge exchange between humanities and other scientific domains (e.g., archaeology, palaeoanthropology, paleogenetics geoscience, solar dynamo). It will generate an invaluable resource to the scientific community, and it will be an exciting opportunity for the development of the scientific careers of PhDs and Post-doctoral researchers at Bologna University.
We will build a precise clock for archaeology, geo- and solar science, to accomplish the definitive high RESOLUTION of European human evolution.