Radiocarbon to Calendar Date Conversion: Calendrical Band Widths as a Function of Radiocarbon Precision (original) (raw)
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Radiocarbon Distance between Calendar Dates
Radiocarbon, 2014
The calibration procedure, and especially the nonlinear shape of the calibration curve, makes analyzing a possible dating result a far from straightforward process. This is especially so if the goal is to distinguish between two relatively close events. Proposed herein is a calculator, or alternatively a graph, which enables reading of the difference between two radiocarbon ages corresponding to their expected calendar ages. The result may surprise the less experienced 14C users. Such a calculation also indicates the time periods with high or low potential for application of the wiggle-matching method.
Journal of Archaeological Science, 2004
Users in the Quaternary and Archaeological Sciences have expressed a general desire for significant improvements in the accuracy and precision of radiocarbon dating results in general but also allied to the measurement of small samples. The accuracy and precision of measurement has also been the focus of some attention within the 14 C community. As a result, the 14 C community has undertaken a wide-scale, far-reaching and evolving programme of inter-comparisons, to the benefit of laboratories and users alike, the most recent being completed in 2001. The information arising from the studies is important for the appropriate interpretation of the scientific evidence provided by 14 C analyses in calibration and construction of chronologies where assemblages of dates are frequently assessed.
A comparison of methods used for the calibration of radiocarbon dates
Current calibration methods for single and replicate 14C dates are compared. Various forms of tabular and graphic output are discussed. Results from all the methods show reasonable agreement but further methodological development and improvements in computer output are required. Comparison of existing techniques for a series of non-contemporaneous dates showed less agreement amongst participants on this issue. We recommend that calibrated dates should be presented as a combination of graphs and ranges, in preference to mean and standard deviation.
Palaeolithic radiocarbon chronology: quantifying our confidence beyond two half-lives.
Journal of Archaeological Science 30: 1685–1693, 2003
It is now three decades since Waterbolk introduced evaluation criteria to 14 C chronology. Despite this, and other subsequent attempts to introduce quality control in the use of 14 C data, no systematic procedure has been adopted by the archaeological community. As a result, our databases may be significantly weakened by questionable dates and/or questionable associations between dated samples and the archaeological phenomena they are intended to represent. As the use of chronometric data in general becomes more ambitious, we must pause and assess how reliable these data are. Here, we forward a set of evaluation criteria which take into account archaeological (e.g. associational, stratigraphic) and chronometric (e.g. pre-treatment and measurement) criteria. We intend to use such criteria to evaluate a large 14 C dataset we have assembled to investigate Late Glacial settlement in Europe, the Near East and North Africa, supported by the Leverhulme Trust. We suggest that the procedure presented here may at least form the basis of the development of more rigorous, scientific use of 14 C dates.
Debates over Palaeolithic chronology – the reliability of 14C is confirmed
Journal of Archaeological Science, 2012
The debate about the complex issues of human development during the Middle to Upper Palaeolithic transition period (45e35 ka BP) has been hampered by concerns about the reliability of the radiocarbon dating method. Large 14 C anomalies were postulated and radiocarbon dating was considered flawed. We show here that these issues are no longer relevant, because the large anomalies are artefacts beyond plausible physical limits for their magnitude. Previous inconsistencies between 14 C radiocarbon datasets have been resolved, and a new radiocarbon calibration curve, IntCal09 (Reimer et al., 2009), was created. Improved procedures for bone collagen extraction and charcoal pre-treatment generally result in older ages, consistent with independently dated time markers.
2023 Calibration of 14C dates using biological kinship
Kinship, Sex, and Biological Relatedness. The contribution of archaeogenetics to the understanding of social and biological relations 15. Mitteldeutscher Archäologentag vom 6. bis 8. Oktober 2022 in Halle (Saale) 15th Archaeological Conference of Central Germany October 6–8, 2022 in Halle (Saale), 2023
The determination of absolute dates with the help of 14C dating has become an indispensable part of archaeology. As one of the most important physical dating methods, it is constantly being improved, so that today‘s modern AMS devices (Accelerator Mass Spectrometer) provide significantly more precise analytical data than in the past. The precision of a date today is mainly limited by the calibration, i.e., the translation of a 14C age into a calendar date. Thus, a single highly precise 14C age can sometimes yield several broad dating spans due to the structure of the relevant calibration curve. However, in cases where relative chronological information can be linked with 14C ages – such as dating individuals with known family relationships – these relative chronological clues can lead to more precise calibrations and 14C dates. In all cases where Bayesian modeling is performed, the modeled 14C dates are significantly more constrained than the individual uncontextualised dates. A narrowing of the calibrated date ranges by 40–70 % can be achieved, while still maintaining accuracy.
IntCal04 terrestrial radiocarbon age calibration, 026 cal kyr BP
2004
A new calibration curve for the conversion of radiocarbon ages to calibrated (cal) ages has been constructed and internationally ratified to replace IntCal98, which extended from 0-24 cal kyr BP (Before Present, 0 cal BP = AD 1950). The new calibration data set for terrestrial samples extends from 0-26 cal kyr BP, but with much higher resolution beyond 11.4 cal kyr BP than IntCal98. Dendrochronologically-dated tree-ring samples cover the period from 0-12.4 cal kyr BP. Beyond the end of the tree rings, data from marine records (corals and foraminifera) are converted to the atmospheric equivalent with a site-specific marine reservoir correction to provide terrestrial calibration from 12.4-26.0 cal kyr BP. A substantial enhancement relative to IntCal98 is the introduction of a coherent statistical approach based on a random walk model, which takes into account the uncertainty in both the calendar age and the 14 C age to calculate the underlying calibration curve (Buck and Blackwell, this issue). The tree-ring data sets, sources of uncertainty, and regional offsets are discussed here. The marine data sets and calibration curve for marine samples from the surface mixed layer (Marine04) are discussed in brief, but details are presented in Hughen et al. (this issue a). We do not make a recommendation for calibration beyond 26 cal kyr BP at this time; however, potential calibration data sets are compared in another paper (van der Plicht et al., this issue).