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The Influence of Pretreatment Chemistry on the Radiocarbon Dating of Campanian Ignimbrite-Aged Charcoal from Kostenki 14 (Russia)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Katerina Douka ,
Thomas Higham  and
Andrey Sinitsyn
Katerina Douka*
Affiliation:
Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit (ORAU), Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art, University of Oxford, Dyson Perrins Building, South Parks Road, Oxford, OX1 3QY, UK
Thomas Higham
Affiliation:
Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit (ORAU), Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art, University of Oxford, Dyson Perrins Building, South Parks Road, Oxford, OX1 3QY, UK
Andrey Sinitsyn
Affiliation:
Institute of the History of Material Culture, Russian Academy of Sciences, Dvortsovaya nab. 18, 191186, St. Petersburg, Russia
*
*Corresponding author. Fax: +44 1865 285220.E-mail address:katerina.douka@rlaha.ox.ac.uk (K. Douka).
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Abstract

The presence of an independently dated marker in an archaeological site offers rare opportunities for assessing the reliability of radiocarbon dates, especially when these are close to the age limit of the technique. Two different pretreatment protocols (routine ABA and more rigorous ABOx-SC) were employed in the chemical preparation of the same charcoal sample from a layer closely associated to the Campanian Ignimbrite tephra at the Russian Palaeolithic site of Kostenki 14 (Markina Gora). The ABA-treated fraction gave an age of ∽33 14C ka BP, comparable to a previous determination from the same layer, whereas the ABOx-SC produced an older age of ∽35 14C ka BP. This is the first radiocarbon determination of an archaeological sample to provide an age consistent with the "calendar" age for the CI tephra marker.

Keywords

PalaeolithicCharcoalABOX-SCRadiocarbon datingKostenki 14Campanian Ignimbrite
Type
Short Paper
Information
Quaternary Research , Volume 73 , Issue 3 , May 2010 , pp. 583 - 587
Copyright
University of Washington

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