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Analyzing Radiocarbon Reservoir Offsets Through Stable Nitrogen Isotopes and Bayesian Modeling: A Case Study Using Paired Human and Faunal Remains from the Cis-Baikal Region, Siberia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 February 2016

Christopher Bronk Ramsey ,
Rick Schulting ,
Olga I Goriunova ,
Vladimir I Bazaliiskii  and
Andrzej W Weber
Christopher Bronk Ramsey
Affiliation:
Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art, Dyson Perrins Building, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3QY, United Kingdom. Email: christopher.ramsey@rlaha.ox.ac.uk
Rick Schulting
Affiliation:
Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art, Dyson Perrins Building, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3QY, United Kingdom. Email: christopher.ramsey@rlaha.ox.ac.uk
Olga I Goriunova
Affiliation:
Department of Archaeology and Ethnography, Irkutsk State University, Karl Marx Street 1, Irkutsk 664003, Russia
Vladimir I Bazaliiskii
Affiliation:
Department of Archaeology and Ethnography, Irkutsk State University, Karl Marx Street 1, Irkutsk 664003, Russia
Andrzej W Weber
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, 13–15 H.M. Tory Building, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta T6G 2H4, Canada
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Abstract

Dietary offsets in radiocarbon dates are becoming increasingly interesting to researchers, not only because of their impact on the reliability of chronologies but also because of the possibilities for extracting further dietary information from the 14C data itself. This is the case with the cemeteries of the Cis-Baikal region being studied as part of the international Baikal-Hokkaido Archaeology Project set up to examine hunter-gatherer cultural dynamics in eastern Asia. Fortunately, to control for a freshwater reservoir offset, we were able to obtain a number of paired terrestrial herbivore and human material for 14C dating. This article tests the correspondence between stable isotope evidence and the offsets seen in 14C values and the implications for the analysis of the 14C measurements as “chronometric dates.” This is an unusually well-documented example of freshwater reservoir offsets, providing an ideal case study to test different approaches to analyzing such offset information. Here, a purely Bayesian approach is compared with the more frequently applied linear regression analysis.

Type
Reservoir Effects
Information
Radiocarbon , Volume 56 , Issue 2 , 2014 , pp. 789 - 799
Copyright
Copyright © 2014 by the Arizona Board of Regents on behalf of the University of Arizona 

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