Correlating the Ancient Maya and Modern European Calendars with High-Precision AMS 14C Dating

Abstract

The reasons for the development and collapse of Maya civilization remain controversial and historical events carved on stone monuments throughout this region provide a remarkable source of data about the rise and fall of these complex polities. Use of these records depends on correlating the Maya and European calendars so that they can be compared with climate and environmental datasets. Correlation constants can vary up to 1000 years and remain controversial. We report a series of high-resolution AMS 14C dates on a wooden lintel collected from the Classic Period city of Tikal bearing Maya calendar dates. The radiocarbon dates were calibrated using a Bayesian statistical model and indicate that the dates were carved on the lintel between AD 658-696. This strongly supports the Goodman-Martínez-Thompson (GMT) correlation and the hypothesis that climate change played an important role in the development and demise of this complex civilization.

The Marco Gonzalez Maya site, Ambergris Caye, Belize: Assessing the impact of human activities by examining diachronic processes at the local scale

“…Dates for Maya ceramics are known by reference to burial and cache sequences based on archaeological associations with inscribed monuments with absolute calendar dates (Smith 1955;Martin and Skidmore 2012). Radiocarbon dates also contribute to the Maya lowlands sequence (Kennett et al 2013). No radiocarbon dates have yet been run for Marco Gonzalez archaeological samples; however, identities and similarities with ceramics from other coastal sites, such as the Colson Point sites (Graham 1994) and Lamanai, where radiocarbon dates have been run (Graham 1989: 154;, support the Marco Gonzalez chronology (Fig 2.1).…”

High-precision AMS 14 C chronology for Gatecliff Shelter, Nevada

“…This modeling approach is widely used in Europe and the Near East to improve and refine regional cultural chronologies (Bayliss et al, 1999, Bronk Ramsey et al, 2010Colledge and Conolly, 2010), using legacy 14 C dates to construct chronological models that are then refined with complimentary higher precision AMS 14 C dates. Archaeologists working in the Americas are also starting to use the approach in productive ways (Culleton et al, 2012; Inomata et al, 2013;Jazwa et al, 2013;Kennett et al, 2011Kennett et al, , 2013a. Bayesian chronological models are built using the available radiocarbon dates for a site combined with non-quantitative contextual information obtained in the field or from historical documents (e.g., mission records, Kennett et al, 2013b).…”

Questioning Postclassic Continuity at Baking Pot, Belize, Using Direct AMS14C Dating of Human Burials

“…Because SH air is on average about 45 ± 15 14 C yr older than contemporary NH air between 500 cal BC and cal AD 1500, a mixture of the two would tend to make the dates reported here slightly older than their true age Reimer et al 2013). Recent work to confirm the correlation between the Maya and Gregorian calendars proposed a mixture of 67% NH and 33% SH based on wiggle-matching between cellulose isotope data and the YOK-I speleothem record (Kennett et al 2013). For the majority of our samples, calibrating with that mixture tends to have little effect on the overall 2σ calibrated range, though it does tend to pull the probability densities later within that range.…”