Combining dendrochronology and radiocarbon dating at the Late Medieval site of Sant’Alvise, Venice, Italy

The excavation of a series of wooden structures, built to reclaim land on Venice’s northwestern edge, provided an opportunity, using Bayesian chronological modeling, to combine precise dendrochronological and radiocarbon dating results with floating tree-ring chronologies, artifactual dating and stratigraphic evidence. Our model indicates that the first structure was built in the early AD 1340s, the second in the early AD 1370s, and the reclaimed area was extended again within about a decade of cal AD 1400. The dates of these building episodes bracket the deposition of important pottery assemblages, including imports from Spain and the Eastern Mediterranean.