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A major ‘plateau’ in the radiocarbon time-scale at c. 9650 b.p.: the evidence from Star Carr (North Yorkshire)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Paul Mellars
Paul Mellars*
Affiliation:
Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge, Downing Street, Cambridge CB2 3DZ
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Extract

Over the past 10-20 years archaeologists have become familiar with the problems of potential ‘aberrations’ in the radiocarbon time-scale, arising from factors such as the varying rates of production of I4C in the upper atmosphere, or from the delayed cycling of ‘fossil’ carbon in the overall carbon reservoir. In some cases these aberrations can lead to dramatic ‘wiggles’ in the radiocarbon calibration curves, while in other cases (as, for example, during the Iron Age, around 700 BC) they can lead to substantial ‘plateaux’ during which measured radiocarbon dates show no detectable change over periods of several centuries (Pearson & Stuiver 1986; Stuiver & Pearson 1986).

Type
Notes
Information
Antiquity , Volume 64 , Issue 245 , December 1990 , pp. 836 - 841
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 1990

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Footnotes

New research is pushing back the radiocarbon calibration curve into the immediate Postglacial, where the consequences of the bumps, wiggles and other quirks of the curve will have archaeological implications of the kind familiar – and sometimes tiresome – to researchers in later periods

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