We have developed accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) measurement techniques for ultra small-size samples ranging from 0.01 to 0.10 mg C with a new type of MC-SNICS ion source system. We can generate 4 times higher ion beam current intensity for ultra-small samples by optimization of graphite position in the target holder with the new ionizer geometry. CO2 gas graphitized in the newly developed vacuum line is pressed to a depth of 1.5 mm from the front of the target holder. This is much deeper than the previous position at 0.35 mm depth. We measured 12C4+ beam currents generated by small standards and ion beam currents (15–30 μA) from the targets in optimized position, lasting 20 min for 0.01 mg C and 65 min for 0.10 mg C. We observed that the measured 14C/12C ratios are unaffected by the difference of ion beam currents ranging from 5 to 30 μA, enabling measurement of ultra-small samples with high precision. Examination of the background samples revealed 1.1 μg of modern and 1 μg of dead carbon contaminations during target graphite preparation. We make corrections for the contamination from both the modern and background components. Reduction of the contamination is necessary for conducting more accurate measurement.

The following short paper is a response to criticism by Finkelstein and Piasetzky (2010b), published in the present issue of Radiocarbon, of our 2008 paper in Radiocarbon concerning the evaluation of 14C dates from Iron Age levels in Israel published by Boaretto et al. (2005). We refer to criticism concerning exclusion and inclusion of data. We also evaluate new models suggested by Finkelstein and Piasetzky and in particular their suggestion of regional stages marking the end of the Iron Age in Israel. We also comment on several methodological issues.

Bayesian sequencing of radiocarbon dates deals with the problem that in most cases there does not exist an unambiguous way to define the so-called prior function, which represents information in addition to the result of the 14C measurements alone. However, a random choice of a particular prior function can lead to biased results. In this paper, “robust Bayesian analysis,” which uses a whole set of prior functions, is introduced as a more reliable method. The most important aspects of the mathematical foundation and of the practical realization of the method are described. As a general result, robust Bayesian analysis leads to higher accuracy, but paid for with reduced precision. Our investigations indicate that it seems possible to establish robust analysis for practical applications.

Fifteen years of research on accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) radiocarbon dating of non-hydraulic mortar has now led to the establishment of a chronology for the medieval stone churches of the Åland Islands (Finland), where no contemporary written records could shed light on the first building phases. In contrast to other material for dating, well-preserved mortar is abundantly available from every building stage.

We have gathered experience from AMS dating of 150 Åland mortar samples. Approximately half of them have age control from dendrochronology or from 14C analysis of wooden fragments in direct contact with the mortar. Of the samples with age control, 95% of the results agree with the age of the wood. The age control from dendrochronology, petrologic microscopy, chemical testing of the mortars, and mathematical modeling of their behavior during dissolution in acid have helped us to define criteria of reliability to interpret the 14C results when mortar dating is the only possibility to constrain the buildings in time. With these criteria, 80% of all samples reached conclusive results, and we have thus far been able to establish the chronology of 12 out of the 14 churches and chapels, while 2 still require complementary analyses.

In the last decade, small and compact accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) systems became available operating at terminal voltages of 1 MV and below. This new category of instruments has become competitive for radiocarbon detection to larger tandem accelerators and many of these instruments are successfully used for 14C dating or biomedical applications. The AMS group at ETH Zurich has demonstrated that small instruments can be built, which allow measurements also of other radionuclides such as 10Be, 26Al, 129I, and the actinides. 41Ca measurements can be performed with sufficient sensitivity for biomedical applications. A summary of recent developments made at the 500kV Pelletron in Zurich is given and its performance is compared with that of a commercial compact instrument from the company High Voltage Engineering Europe (HVEE) in Amersfoort, the Netherlands, operating at 1MV at CNA in Seville, Spain, as well as with that of larger AMS facilities. It turns out that the ion optics, stripper design, and the detection system are critical for the performance.

The national project for the measurement of radiocarbon includes different scientific partners for the accelerator named ARTEMIS (French acronym for Accélérateur pour la Recherche en sciences de la Terre, Environnement, Muséologie Installé à Saclay), available to the scientific community since 2004 (Cottereau et al. 2007). The French Ministry of Culture uses this accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) facility at the request of archaeologists or curators of museums or of historical monuments. For the preparation of some samples, a laboratory has been installed at the Centre of Research and Restoration of the Museums of France, located in the Louvre Palace. In this report, the first data carried out on vegetal samples from museum objects or archaeological remains, dates are presented in terms of yr BP (before AD 1950).

Despite its rich paleontological record, only limited research has been published on the Pleistocene and Holocene vertebrate faunal record of New York State. This paper presents a set of dates from the bone collagen of Pleistocene and Holocene mammal specimens housed in the Vertebrate Paleontology Collections at the New York State Museum, Albany, New York, USA.

The cemetery in the Riparo Valtenesi rockshelter at Manerba del Garda in northern Italy is well known for its wooden burial chambers. These chambers are some of the best sources of evidence for 3rd millennium BC collective burial in Europe. To further refine the absolute dating of burial activity at the site (beyond the approximate data provided by a previous series of routine radiocarbon measurements), a charred construction oak timber was sampled from Chamber 133 for 14C dendro wiggle-matching (DWM). We present the results from the DWM analysis, the first of its kind for the Italian Copper Age as a whole, establishing a terminus post quem for construction of Chamber 133 ∼2955–2872 cal BC.

Approximately 2700 radiocarbon results are currently available from European megalithic contexts. The interpretation of these 14C dates is often difficult. It is not easy to connect many of them from their archaeological context to the construction or the burial phase of the graves. This paper focuses on the megaliths of Scandinavia—a special megalith region—as it is the only place in Europe with 14C dates directly referable to the construction of the passage graves, the graves have good bone preservation, and new dating sequences are available. Some 188 14C results are now available from Scandinavian passage graves. In Sweden, new data suggest that these graves were built from the first half of the 35th century BC onwards. The 14C dates from birch bark as filling material between dry walls make it possible to build a sequence for the construction phase of the passage graves in Denmark from the 33rd century BC onward. With an interpretative Bayesian statistical framework, it is possible to untangle the nuances of the differences for the origin and the spreading of the megaliths in the different regions, to define, together with the archaeological remains, possible cultural-historical processes behind these phenomena and to discuss diffusion versus convergence.

This study follows on from previous research at Perth, Scotland, in which we dated carbonized food residues removed from the external surface of rim sherds of cooking pots of London Sandy Shellyware pottery (Museum of London Pottery Fabric Code SSW). The 15 residues that were dated produced 14C ages between 910 ± 35 and 1085 ± 40 BP. We have now carried out radiocarbon measurements on similar residues from the same fabric obtained from the Billingsgate excavations in London and the Bryggen excavations in Bergen, Norway. The London and Bergen measurements gave age ranges of 905 ± 35 to 1115 ± 35 BP and 920 ± 35 to 1055 ± 35 BP, respectively, both very similar to the Perth age range. The measurements at each site are in agreement with our Bayesian model assumption that they belong to a single phase of activity. The model estimates the introduction of London Sandy Shellyware in London to cal AD 820–1020, in Perth to cal AD 930–1020, and in Bergen to cal AD 980–1030 (95% probability). Further modeling predicts that it fell out of use in the reverse order.

The Bayesian statistical method of the OxCal v 4.1 program is used to construct an age-depth model for a set of accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) radiocarbon ages of organic debris collected from a late Holocene Dead Sea stratigraphic section (the Ein Feshkha Nature Reserve). The model is tested for a case where no prior earthquake information is applied and for a case where there is incorporation of known ages of 4 prominent historical earthquakes as chronological anchor points along the section. While the anchor-based model provided a tightly constrained age-depth regression, the “non-anchored” model still produces a correlation where most of the 68% or 95% age ranges of the 52 seismites can be correlated to historical earthquakes. This presents us with the opportunity for high-resolution paleoseismic analysis and comparison between various sites.

Recent efforts to precisely date the florescence of the Clovis culture in North America have been hampered by both practical and theoretical problems: 1) The era of Clovis expansion (about 11,200–10,700 BP or 13,200–12,700 cal BP) coincides with the gap between the anchored central European tree-ring sequence (back to 12,400 cal BP) and the floating Bølling-Allerød sequence; 2) Clovis seems to immediately precede the onset of the Younger Dryas (YD) stadial. The “black mats” of the US Southwest appear to mark the regional occurrence of this climatic downturn. However, the timing and means of long-distance propagation of this climatic event are not yet well understood. Greenland ice cores (GISP2, GRIP, and NGRIP) remain poorly synchronized, with a discrepancy of 100 to 250 yr for the date of onset (as late as 12,700 cal BP, or as early as 12,950 cal BP); 3) The YD onset was accompanied by a rapid drop of radiocarbon ages from 11,000 to 10,600 BP in less than a century. The mechanism causing this was probably a change in overturning circulation in the North Atlantic. Do variable Clovis ages, often from what appear to be single-occupation contexts, reflect this “cliff” effect, slightly earlier minor reversals during the late Allerød, or simply the practical limitations of precision of the 14C method? 4) Dates for Fishtail or Fell I sites (with fluted, stemmed points) in southern South America are statistically indistinguishable from Clovis dates in North America. Does this imply very rapid population expansion, diffusion of tool-making techniques through long-established local populations (as argued by Waters and Stafford 2007), or abnormally large interhemispheric 14C offsets? 5) Are recent ostensibly high-precision collagen-derived dates for Paleoindian-associated fauna (e.g. horse and mammoth) reliable? Are interlaboratory blind tests of the new filtration processes necessary?

An age-depth model for laminated sediments of Lake Soppensee is constructed using radiocarbon ages of macrofossils and a depositional model of the OxCal v 4.1 program with the updated IntCal09 data set. The resulting calendar chronology is compared with the varve chronology that was built for this record in a previous study (Hajdas 1993); there is a very good agreement between the 2 approaches. This illustrates the potential of high-resolution 14C dating for construction of reliable, high-resolution calendar timescales for sedimentary records. Based on the age-depth model of this study, the Vasset/Killian tephra found in sediment of Soppensee dates to a calendar age of 9291–9412 cal BP (2-σ range) while the Lachersee tephra dates to 12,735–12,871 cal BP (2-σ range). Precise dating of the Late Glacial boundaries is possible with this chronology but requires more precise correlation between proxies and records than typically practiced.

Many of the Loch Tay crannogs were built in the Early Iron Age and so calibration of the radiocarbon ages produces very broad calendar age ranges due to the well-documented Hallstatt plateau in the calibration curve. However, the large oak timbers that were used in the construction of some of the crannogs potentially provide a means of improving the precision of the dating through subdividing them into decadal or subdecadal increments, dating them to high precision and wiggle-matching the resulting data to the master 14C calibration curve. We obtained a sample from 1 oak timber from Oakbank Crannog comprising 70 rings (Sample OB06 WMS 1, T103) including sapwood that was complete to the bark edge. The timber is situated on the northeast edge of the main living area of the crannog and as a large and strong oak pile would have been a useful support in more than 1 phase of occupation and may be related to the earliest construction phase of the site. This was sectioned into 5-yr increments and dated to a precision of approximately ±8–16 14C yr (1 σ). The wiggle-match predicts that the last ring dated was formed around 500 BC (maximum range of 520–465 BC) and should be taken as indicative of the likely time of construction of Oakbank Crannog. This is a considerable improvement on the estimates based on single 14C ages made on oak samples, which typically encompassed the period from around 800–400 BC.

In this study, we test the possibility of using databases of radiocarbon ages to estimate boundaries of climatic chronozones. The Alaska region was chosen and compared with chronozones of 2 European countries: Poland and the Netherlands. The study included setting up a database of 14C ages published for climatic records from Alaska. Some 974 14C determinations on organic samples were selected and used to establish chronozones for the Late Glacial and the Holocene for the Alaska region. The selected data were calibrated and a summed probability density function (PDF) was calculated. The shape analysis of the constructed frequency distribution of 14C dates on calendar timescales together with the assumption about preferential sampling seems to be a useful tool for establishing calendar ages for boundaries of climatic periods, i.e. chronozones.