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Comments on Radiocarbon Dates from Mexico

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 June 2018

Helmut de Terra
Helmut de Terra*
Affiliation:
New York City, New York
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Extract

In the Summer of 1949, I was asked to 1 cooperate in securing appropriate samples from important Mexican sites. These, I suggested, should be selected with a view of obtaining new data on three significant problems: early man and associated geologic formations, the Archaic cultures, and the monumental civilizations of Teotihuacan and Monte Alban. This choice was dictated by the prevailing chronologic uncertainties of prehistoric cultures in Mexico and by my previous geologic approaches to time sequences in the Basin of Mexico. Computations from glacial, lake and erosion phenomena had suggested that previous age estimates, notably those presented by Vaillant (1944) and other archaeologists, had been unduly conservative. This was especially evident in the case of the basic pottery levels, known as the early Archaic or early Middle cultures, then assumed to have existed about 2100 to 1600 years ago.

Type
Research Article
Information
Memoirs of the Society for American Archaeology , Volume 8: Radiocarbon Dating: A Report on the Program to Aid in the Development of the Method of Dating , 1951 , pp. 33 - 36
Copyright
Copyright © Society for American Archaeology 1951

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References

* Three botanists were consulted on the nature of this vegetation: J. Itie of the National Agricultural School, Mexico; A. C. Smith, Curator, Division of Phanerogams at the Smithsonian Institution, and J. Beal, Head of the Department of Botany at the University of Chicago. They could not identify the water-plant but all agreed that the major portion of the plant remains represented roots rather than stems. Itie made a microscopic search for seeds in the clay but found none. Smith took this to indicate that the vegetation must be intrusive. A similar opinion was expressed by Beal who did not think it possible for a single plant to have grown continuously while twenty inches of lake sediment were deposited. In other words growth was from top to bottom rather than in the reverse order.