Radiocarbon Age Calibration

The Wells Dam Project area of the Upper-Middle Columbia River has been central to developing our understanding of long-term use of the central Washington Plateau and the development of Plateau land-use models as well as to understanding complex sedentary -foragers more broadly. A key aspect of models developed for the area has been tied to apparent occupational hiatuses in the regional record. This study reevaluates the chronology of the Wells project area, focusing on Cassimer Bar, by examining radiocarbon dates acquired in the project area since the last major synthetic study of the region over 30 years ago. Calibrated radiocarbon dates using a Kernel Density Estimation model, an updated shell calibration curve, and georeferenced historic aerials and maps shed light on the timing of the formation of Cassimer Bar as a landform, and on changes in the bar’s habitation patterns over the Holocene. Combined data suggest continuous occupation of the landform with periods of more intensive use and highlight taphonomic biases resulting from inundation.

Published in Études/Inuit/Studies, 39(2): 117-144.

Résumé: Cet article présente les résultats de 36 nouvelles datations au radiocarbone obtenues pour déterminer si les sites Pita (KcFr-5) et Ohituk (KcFr-3A) d'Ivujivik font partie de la période dite de transition entre le Prédorsétien et le Dorsétien, tel que conclu lors de recherches antérieures, ou représentent des occupations lors des périodes correspondant à ces deux cultures. En considérant ces datations et celles obtenues auparavant, il apparaît que ces sites furent effectivement occupés entre 800 et 400 av. J.-C. Toutefois, le site Pita a surtout été visité pendant la période prédorsétienne et une de ses datations est la plus ancienne obtenue jusqu'ici pour le Nunavik. Quant au site Ohituk, il fut aussi occupé pendant toute la période dorsétienne. Les datations des deux sites couvrant plus de trois millénaires, force est de constater que les vestiges archéologiques proviennent d'un palimpseste d'occupations et ne représentent pas une période de transition.

The absolute chronology of the Late Minoan I A period and in particular the date of the Minoan eruption at Santorini is the object of a debate which is ongoing since the 1970’s, and lead many scholars to speak of a "conflict" between archaeological and Radiocarbon dating. This study
presents a collation of all the main arguments for the archaeological chronology in the bibliography, and a reanalysis of the radiocarbon datasets from Akrotiri on Santorini, Tell el Dab'a in Egypt and
other relevant sites for the interlinked chronology. In particular, a critic approach to the accuracy of Bayesian chronology applied so far and a new possible approach to radiocarbon interpretation based on notions from Quantum mathematics are suggested, which, in combination with the new dendrochronological data from Pearson et al 2018, provide new evidence for an eruption date possibly as late as the second half of the XVI century BC. In addition, an open source package to perform the different analyses has been developed and uploaded on-line at the site
http://c14.bpinfo.org

This document is a list of all the radiocarbon dates used to produce my Master's Thesis. To use this Database Type "true" into the rows you wish to generate calibrated radiocarbon dates for. The percent likelihood for the radiocarbon dates (during a 5 year window) should appear at the top of the chart. The "chart tab" generates a graph of a radiocarbon date's probability over time. Multiple radiocarbon dates can be added together using this model.

Published in Arctic Anthropology, 55(2): 17-43.

Abstract: This article presents a reassessment of the Paleoeskimo presence in Ivujivik (northwest tip of Nunavik, Canada). It discusses 36 new radiocarbon dates obtained to determine whether the Pita (KcFr-5) and Ohituk (KcFr-3A) sites belong to the so-called "Pre-Dorset/Dorset transition period," as concluded from previous research, or represent occupations during periods corresponding to either culture. The new dates and those obtained earlier confirm that the sites were occupied around 800-400 BC (i.e., the presumed transition). However, other dates demonstrate that the Pita site was mainly visited during the Pre-Dorset period and contains the oldest date (2460-2290 cal BC, 1 sigma) obtained so far for Nunavik. As for the Ohituk site, it was mostly occupied during the Dorset period. Because dates from the sites spread over three millennia, it is concluded that the archaeological remains come from a palimpsest of occupations and do not represent a transition period.

Updated calibrated dates of the radiocarbon ages from the Neolithic settlement Ftelia on Mykonos (25􀁱 22΄ 30΄΄ E, 37􀁱 27΄ 30΄΄ N) using the latest issues of the international calibration curves INTCAL13 and MARINE13 allowed the calculation of the "marine reservoir effect" R(t) and the local marine reservoir deviation ΔR values in the Cyclades during the Neolithic period. These were found to be R(t) -26 ± 96 yr and ΔR = -400 ± 113 14C yr, The obtained calibrated dates showed that the site was occupied during the Late Neolithic period for about six centuries [5051-4457 BC, (7000-6406 cal BP), 1σ].

Im Kreuzgang des Klosters St. Johann in Müstair wurde 1986 ein Grab mit einem kleiner Silberkelch und zugehöriger Patene freigelegt.
Das Skelett sowie die Funde wurden archäologisch, anthropologisch, historisch, epigraphisch, mittels Metall- und Textilanalyse, Röntgenradiographie und Neutronentomographie mittels 14C-Datierung und handwerklich untersucht. Die kombinierten Ergebnisse all dieser Methoden deuten darauf hin, dass es sich beim Bestatteten um den Churer Bischof Nortpert von Hohenwart († 26. oder 27. Januar 1088) gehandelt haben könnte, der an dieser prominenten Stelle im Kreuzgang beigesetzt wurde. Die Herstellung des Silberkelchs erfolgte fast genauso, wie es Theophilus Presbyter wenig später in seinem Werk „Schedula diversarum artium“ beschrieben hat.

In the cloister of the Abbey of St. John in Muestair, a grave with a small silver chalice was excavated in 1986.
The skeleton and the finds were analysed by archaeological, anthropological and historical methods, by metal and textile analysis, by x-ray radiography and neutron tomography as well as by radiocarbon dating. Last but not least, the production technique of the chalice was assessed by a master craftsman.
The combination of all these methods suggests that the deceased can be identified with some probability as Nortpert von Hohenwart († 26 or 27 January 1088), former bishop of Chur, who had been laid to rest at this prominent spot in the cloister. The silver chalice was crafted almost exactly in the way described by Theophilus Presbyter in his „Schedula diversarum artium“ at the beginning of the 12th century.

This important paper produced by the Tree-Ring Research Lab of the University of Arizona is the result of a new radiocarbon calibration, based on annual tree-ring dating. As one of the outcomes it seems that the Minoan eruption of the Thera volcano happened not in the late 17th but in the 16th century BC between 1560-1540, possibly even as late as 1510. This narrows down or even closes the gap to the archaeological/historical dating of this event. The results have been confirmed by other labs and the extension of the new calibration backwards in time proceeds now in collaboration with the ETH Zurich. Its results will be already considered in the new IntCal19-curve. These results, much superior in  precision in comparison to the smoothened previous IntCal curves  show already that  radiocarbon dates change over  time and should not to be used to twist and bend archaeological data which contradict the traditional radiocarbon chronology.  Archaeological data anchored within a historical chronology framework should better be used as a control mechanism. For prehistoric re-search the radiocarbon based chronology is an indispensable tool. The presented results give hope that 14C research will produce by and by a more accurate chronology. This paper is an important milestone for this objective.

Abstract:
The mid-second millennium BCE eruption of Thera (Santorini) offers a critically important marker horizon to synchronize archaeological chronologies of the Aegean, Egypt, and the Near East and to anchor paleo- environmental records from ice cores, speleothems, and lake sediments. Precise and accurate dating for the event has been the subject of many decades of research. Using calendar-dated tree rings, we created an annual resolution radiocarbon time series 1700–1500 BCE to validate, improve, or more clearly define the limitations for radiocarbon calibration of materials from key eruption contexts. Results show an offset from the interna- tional radiocarbon calibration curve, which indicates a shift in the calibrated age range for Thera toward the 16th century BCE. This finding sheds new light on the long-running debate focused on a discrepancy between radiocarbon (late 17th–early 16th century BCE) and archaeological (mid 16th–early 15th century BCE) dating evidence for Thera.

In the light of recent developments on the accuracy of the radiocarbon
chronology of the LM IA Theran Eruption, this paper intends to clarify the difference between radiocarbon chronology and the statistical interpretation of radiocarbon results, suggesting a prudent application of statistical analysis to both radiocarbon dates and chronology problems. The authors consider the estimation of the Minoan eruption at Thera by means of a Bayesian model as an example of overconfidence on a statistic-based methodology. The same analysis will be applied to a simulated set of non-coeval radiocarbon dates with the purpose to show that the result is adverse to the initial assumptions on the dates. On one hand, this occurs because the model fails to recognise the uncertainties due to the shape of the calibration curve in the interval of the considered dates. On the other hand, the outcome of a χ-square test is improperly used to ascertain the contemporaneity of radiocarbon dates. The availability of simple statistical tools does not allow their indiscriminate applications and can lead to inaccurate conclusions. The authors suggest that an approach to the chronological problem should consider  the environmental context of samples as carefully as their radiocarbon determinations.

The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (the Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit, UNCED), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, held 3rd-14th June 1992, launched the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) which operates through its annual roadshow the UN Conference of Parties (COP) that seeks to establish sustainable management of the global climate system.

The  'Earth Summit' by UN in 1992 brought the problems  in climate to the attention of even some of the world's most remote and isolated nations. One of these nations was the Hopi Nation in Arizona, a non-sovereign nation - which the UN labels as 'indigenous peoples'. In a long chain of events beginning from the League of Nations' decision in 1926 to deny the First Nations of Americas and the small island nations' representation in that international forum, its successor the United Nations, turned down four attempts by the Hopi Nation to raise the issue between 1948 and 1992. Finally, in the immediate aftermath of the Rio Earth Summit (1992), the United Nations Secretary-General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar authorized the Hopi Nation to table the matter to the floor of the United Nations General Assembly 10th-11th December 1992.

The First Nations of Americas Ethnoclimatology Motion and the Tradition-Keepers ('Faith-Keepers') background to that motion is elaborated here in this UNFCCC submission with further points were raised in 1st-2nd October 2018 at CRIAS conference. This contextualises the First Nations of Americas UN General Assembly Investigation Request 101292 which was the Concluding Plea of the World Indigenous Peoples' Joint Summit with the United Nations Parties ('Member States') Delegations to open the first United Nations Year of the Indigenous People (1993) to other similar ethnoclimatologies appearing world wide. The Geophysical Annotations were discussed at the Cochabamba-Tiquipaya Climate Summit (CMPCC) in aftermath of the virtually collapsed Copenhagen Climate Summit (2009) with the request from the UNESCO Delegation of the Plurinational State of Bolivia on 7th January 2010 and His Excellency President Evo Morales Ayma.

The key tenents of the Geophysical Annotations being:

(1) there is a signal noise from a substantial radiocarbon-dilution effect due to major sea level retreats and rises during the Ice Ages that depressurised methane clahtrates - releasing copious amounts of methane and carbon dioxide into air from depressurised seabed clathrates and also from thawing terra firma permafrost; this results in regressive, or sideway, 14C  readings in tree rings so that the cores of the tree trunks can appear substantially 14C-younger than it latest (outermost) tree-rings which should not be the case due to steadiness of the radiocarbon decay.

(2) The accumulation of methane in upper troposphere, stratosphere, and mesosphere which leaves methane signature in the ice cores only from methane-in-transit, additionally the warming episodes' heavy methane loads melted away most of the recent ice surfaces, thus obliterating the-then-most recent snow stratum, leaving behind the earlier less methane rich layers. This causes incomplete records (time gaps) in the ice cores, and hence "global warming" always takes place before with the higher CO2 or CH4 levels in the atmosphere appearing as respondents, rather than drivers of climate change.

(3) Noting that the partial melting equations can also be run inverse direction, it is proposed that the Pleistocene glaciations resulted in damage to Peridotite which partially melted producing basalt deposition in a large scale onto the seafloor in vast effusive eruptions with field emission of heat rather than radial spot emission of heat like in modern-day Surtseyan eruptions that have only a minimal heat crossing to sea surface due to small spatial extent of hot subsea surface. The vaporization of sea water in field emission is vast due to spatial extent of hot subsea surface greatly exceeding the thickness of overlying water column, leading to runaway snowfalls.

On these three premises, the First Nations of Americans Ethnoclimatology Motion at the United Nations General Assembly on 10th-11th December 1992 is proposed as a variant possibility to the climate theories advocated aggressively by the Western Group of Nations and their influential academia. Its implications to present-day climate change suggest that the Polar Ice Caps will continue on their much-faster-than-anticipated loss trajectory through violent collapses. This aspect was highlighted in Sea Research Society's Evidence Giving at the UK Houses of Parliament in Environmental Audit Committee evidence giving on 5th and 24th April 2017.

The United Nations Javier Pérez de Cuéllar