AMS radiocarbon dating of Middle and Upper Palaeolithic bone in the British Isles: improved reliability using ultrafiltration

Jacobi, Roger; Higham, Thomas; Ramsey, Christopher Bronk

doi:10.1002/jqs.1037

Cited by 136 publications

(99 citation statements)

References 56 publications

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“…In this variation U. spelaeus closely parallels the range of isotopic values seen for modern European and North American brown bears (5,7,(28)(29)(30)) and the few data available for Late Pleistocene brown bears (10,42).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 78%

Isotopic evidence for omnivory among European cave bears: Late Pleistocene Ursus spelaeus from the Peştera cu Oase, Romania

Richards

Pacher

Stiller

et al. 2008

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

100

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Previous bone collagen carbon and nitrogen isotopic studies of Late Pleistocene European cave bears (Ursus spelaeus) have shown that these bears frequently had low nitrogen isotope values, similar to those of herbivores and indicating either unusual physiology related to hibernation or a herbivorous diet. Isotopic analysis of animal bone from the Peştera cu Oase (Cave with Bones), Romania, shows that most of its cave bears had higher nitrogen isotope values than the associated herbivores and were, therefore, omnivorous. The Oase bears are securely identified as cave bears by both their morphology and DNA sequences. Although many cave bear populations may have behaved like herbivores, the Oase isotopic data demonstrate that cave bears were capable of altering their diets to become omnivores or even carnivores. These data therefore broaden the dietary profile of U. spelaeus and raise questions about the nature of the carnivore guild in Pleistocene Europe.carbon isotopes ͉ nitrogen isotopes ͉ diets ͉ ancient DNA L ate Pleistocene cave bear (Ursus spelaeus) diet and physiology is not well known, although based on skull, mandible, and tooth morphology, they have been inferred to have been largely herbivorous (1-4). Moreover, isotopic studies of central and western European cave bears have shown that, in most cases where their values are compared with herbivores and carnivores from the same site, they have ␦ 15 N values that plot with, or lower than, herbivores (Table 1). These dietary inferences are in the context of bears that had a period of dormancy, similar to modern black bears (Ursus americanus) and brown bears (Ursus arctos), given the abundance of hibernation nests in European caves. This pattern has been interpreted in several ways.Based Table 1), is that some cave bears were largely herbivorous, as are some modern bears, but that other cave bears were more carnivorous and hence exhibit ␦ 15 N values similar to those of many modern omnivorous U. arctos and U. americanus. In this interpretation, the variation in trophic level indicated by ␦ 15 N values would reflect ecological plasticity among U. spelaeus, in which they were more or less carnivorous depending on available food resources, body-size requirements, interspecific competition, seasonality, and temperature.Regardless of the cause, 86.1% of the available individual European adult cave bear ␦ 15 N values (n ϭ 101) are Ͻ6.0‰, and hence within the basically vegetarian range [the number rises to 95.6%, n ϭ 91 without Hilderbrand et al.'s (14) 10 specimens] (Table 1). In the context of this distribution of ␦ 15 N values, routine isotopic assessment of a cave bear metapodial associated with an early modern human cranium in the Late Pleistocene Peştera cu Oase, Caraş-Severin, southwestern [supporting information (SI) Text and SI Figs. 4 and 5], provided an anomalously high ␦ 15 N value of 7.8‰ (SI Table 2, Oase O34-232). To further evaluate this result and address the cause of the generally low cave bear ␦ 15 N values, we measured the isotope values of c...

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 78%

Isotopic evidence for omnivory among European cave bears: Late Pleistocene Ursus spelaeus from the Peştera cu Oase, Romania

Richards

Pacher

Stiller

et al. 2008

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

100

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“…In two cases, the Arizona lab was able to obtain a determination on a specimen which had failed to yield sufficient carbon in the Oxford lab. In one of these cases (PO5-S1), this discrepancy is hard to explain, since both labs treated the specimen as burned bone (although it is well-known that burned bone is a difficult material to date accurately by the radiocarbon method; Jacobi et al, 2006) 3 .…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

AMS 14C dating of early human occupation of southern South America

Steele

Politis

2009

Journal of Archaeological Science

156

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a b s t r a c tThe time of appearance of a persistent and demographically-viable hunter-gatherer population in late Pleistocene southern South America must be determined by evaluating evidence from as large as possible a sample of candidate archaeological sites in the region. We co-ordinated the AMS dating of multiple bone and charcoal samples from previously-excavated strata at the following sites: Arroyo Seco 2, Paso Otero 5, Piedra Museo, and Cueva Tres Tetas (all in Argentina), and Cueva del Lago Sofia 1 and Tres Arroyos (both in Chile). With one possible exception, we did not obtain new results to confirm earlier observations of pre-Clovis-age cultural activity at any of the sites considered in this study. The possible exception, Arroyo Seco 2, is considered in detail elsewhere [Politis G., Gutierrez M.A., Scabuzzo, C. (Eds), in press. Estado actual de las Investigaciones en el sitio 2 de Arroyo Seco (regió n pampeana, Argentina). Serie Monográ fica INCUAPA 5. Olavarría]. However, our results for the samples which were the most preferred indicators of cultural events (hearth charcoal and cut-marked bone) confirm that people were in the southern cone of South America at or soon after 11,000 BP (13,000 cal BP). Considered alongside recent age estimates for the Clovis culture in North America, these results imply the contemporaneous emergence of a consistent and archaeologically-robust human occupation signal at widely-separated locations across the Western Hemisphere. Such findings suggest that Palaeoindian demic expansion may have involved more than one terminal Pleistocene dispersal episode.

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“…All measurements were made using the single aliquot regenerative-dose (SAR) procedure described elsewhere (e.g., Galbraith et al, 1999;Murray and Wintle, 2000;Jacobi et al, 2006). The SAR procedure involves measuring the OSL signals from the natural (burial) dose and from a series of regenerative doses (given in the laboratory by means of the calibrated 90 Sr/ 90 Y beta source), each of which was preheated at 260 C f or 10 s prior to optical stimulation by an intense, green (532 nm) laser beam for 2 s at 125 C. A fixed test dose (~11 Gy, preheated at 220 C for 5 s) was given after each natural and regenerative dose, and the induced OSL signals were used to correct for any sensitivity changes during the SAR sequence.…”

Section: Measurement Proceduresmentioning

confidence: 99%

Testing of a single grain OSL chronology across the Middle to Upper Palaeolithic transition at Les Cottés (France)

Jacobs

Jankowski

et al. 2015

Journal of Archaeological Science

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a b s t r a c tThe timing of the Middle Palaeolithic to Upper Palaeolithic transition in France is important to help understand when, where and how Neanderthals have been replaced by Homo sapiens. Radiocarbon dating has been the dating workhorse in constructing the chronological framework pertinent to these questions. In this study, we are testing whether single grain OSL dating has the accuracy and precision to be useful as a complementary dating method. The site of Les Cott es provides an ideal testing ground because of its stratigraphic integrity and reliable radiocarbon chronology. We applied single grain OSL dating of quartz to 19 samples and multi-aliquot MET-pIRIR dating of potassium-rich feldspar grains to 5 samples to explicitly test assumptions of pre-depositional resetting of the OSL signal and postdepositional exposure to variable beta dose rates. The good agreement between the single grain OSL and the multi-aliquot MET pIRIR ages suggest that the optical signals of both quartz and feldspar grains were reset prior to deposition and that much of the extra scatter observed in the equivalent dose distribution of quartz grains are likely due to the small-scale differences in beta dose delivered to individual grains. Both the quartz OSL and feldspar MET-pIRIR ages show great consistency with the 14 C ages on bone collected from the same units. This gives confidence in the measurement and analytical approaches used to derive both the equivalent dose and dose rate, the numerator and denominator, respectively, of the luminescence age equation. These results suggest that a systematic and detailed single grain OSL dating study can have the accuracy and precision that is necessary to play a powerful role in the dating of the Middle and Upper Palaeolithic transition and other questions of importance in this time range and geographical area.

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AMS radiocarbon dating of Middle and Upper Palaeolithic bone in the British Isles: improved reliability using ultrafiltration

Cited by 136 publications

References 56 publications

Isotopic evidence for omnivory among European cave bears: Late Pleistocene Ursus spelaeus from the Peştera cu Oase, Romania

Isotopic evidence for omnivory among European cave bears: Late Pleistocene Ursus spelaeus from the Peştera cu Oase, Romania

AMS 14C dating of early human occupation of southern South America

Testing of a single grain OSL chronology across the Middle to Upper Palaeolithic transition at Les Cottés (France)

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