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Apparent Ages of Marine Shells: Implications for Archaeological Dating in Hawai'i

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2016

Tom Dye
Tom Dye*
Affiliation:
State of Hawai'i, Department of Land and Natural Resources, Historic Preservation Division P.O. Box 621, Honolulu, Hawai'i 96809
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Abstract

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The conventional 14C ages of 8 marine shells of known age and 11 marine shells stratigraphically associated with dated wood charcoal show considerable variation from expected ages. One source of this variation is seashore geology; comparison of 6 AMS dates on 3 species of shallow-water, herbivorous gastropod shells from Pleistocene limestone and Holocene volcanic coasts shows that shells from Pleistocene limestone coasts can have apparent, or reservoir, 14C ages up to 620 yr greater than shells of the same species from volcanic coasts. The relatively great variation in apparent ages of Hawaiian marine shells poses problems for their use in dating archaeological sites. For best results, an archaeological marine shell should be sourced to a particular local environment, and the apparent age of shells in that environment determined by dating well-provenienced shells of known age.

Type
Articles
Information
Radiocarbon , Volume 36 , Issue 1 , 1994 , pp. 51 - 57
Copyright
Copyright © The American Journal of Science 

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