Working with Radiocarbon Dates

Abstract

C-14 datings can not only provide us with estimates of the absolute age of objects or occupation layers, but also, when available in sufficient numbers, with initial and terminal datings for cultural phases, thus defining their duration. The value of this is obvious: differential duration in different areas can at last provide definitive answers to long-disputed questions concerning the direction of cultural movement.Working with large numbers of C-14 dates is, however, not entirely free of problems. We are, for example, regularly confronted with larger differences between datings expected to be of similar age than can be accounted for by mere statistical error (Vogel, 1969a) or which can be explained by contamination or other simple causes. One can stop at this point and accept a limited testimonial value for C-14 dates (e.g. Steuer and Tempel, 1968), or one can try to go further by calculating average dates, assuming (for the most part incorrectly) that the chance of a date being too young is equal to its chance of being too old (Neustupný, 1968). The danger in this procedure is that one loses sight of the individual character of each determination: in fact one sample is much more securely associated and more closely contemporary with finds of a particular cultural phase than another, and the chance of contamination or admixture is different for each sample.Another problem is that the number of C-14 dates that one must take into consideration is often so large that they cannot be digested without some form of graphic presentation, and for this there is as yet no uniformity of practice.

A critique of the chronometric evidence for hominid fossils: I. Africa and the Near East 500–50ka

“…The idea of applying such a sifting process to the dates relating to hominid fossils is not new, as a scheme for the general classification of the reliability of dates and their association with fossils was set out by Oakley (1964), and a detailed scheme for critical consideration of radiocarbon dates was described by Waterbolk (1971) and more recently by Pettit et al (2003). The caveats and criteria for reliability of other dating techniques are less explicitly set out in the literature.…”

“The good, the bad, the weird”: Stone Age and Early Metal Period radiocarbon dates and chronology from the Karelian Isthmus, North-West Russia

“…Methodically sound and reproducible evaluation principles are needed when working with archaeological radiocarbon dates, and accordingly assessment criteria has been suggested on occasions since the 1970s (e.g. Waterbolk, 1971;Spriggs, 1989;Kuzmin and Tankerslay, 1996).…”

La necrópolis celtibérica del Inchidero (Aguilar de Montuenga, Soria): Estratigrafía, cronotipología y dataciones radiocarbónicas

“…Una de ellas no pudo ser analizada por lo que el conjunto de muestras que ahora analizamos se refiere a siete muestras de las siguientes tumbas: C5t4, C5t5, C5t8, C5t9, C5G10t2, C3G13t3 y C3G14t2. la elección se hizo atendiendo, en primer lugar, a la seguridad de que no estuvieran contaminadas y que fueran representativas del contexto arqueológico que pretendíamos fechar según las diferencias y fases que habíamos observado estratigráfica y cronotipológicamente sin olvidar que, respecto a los requerimientos de sincronía (bowman 1990) y asociación (Waterbolk 1971(Waterbolk y 1983, la incineración es posterior a la elaboración de los materiales arqueológicos que la acompañan pero sincrónica de la construcción de la tumba. partíamos obviamente de la interpretación estratigráfica de un yacimiento complejo y del estudio de materiales por analogías morfológicas y series evolutivas, según directrices arqueológicas, resultando de ello una reconstrucción de la evolución de la necrópolis en términos de cronología relativa.…”