Enhancing radiocarbon chronologies of colonization: Chronometric hygiene revisited
Accurately dating when people first colonized new areas is vital for understanding the pace of past cultural and environmental changes, including questions of mobility, human impacts and human responses to climate change. Establishing effective chronologies of these events requires the synthesis of...
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ftanucanberra:oai:openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au:1885/201511 2024-01-14T10:07:40+01:00 Enhancing radiocarbon chronologies of colonization: Chronometric hygiene revisited Schmid, Magdalena Wood, Rachel Newton, A Vésteinsson, Orri Dugmore, Andrew J application/pdf http://hdl.handle.net/1885/201511 https://doi.org/10.1017/RDC.2018.129 https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/bitstream/1885/201511/5/01_Schmid_Enhancing_radiocarbon_2019.pdf.jpg en_AU eng Cambridge University Press 0033-8222 http://hdl.handle.net/1885/201511 doi:10.1017/RDC.2018.129 https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/bitstream/1885/201511/5/01_Schmid_Enhancing_radiocarbon_2019.pdf.jpg © 2019 by the Arizona Board of Regents on behalf of the University of Arizona Radiocarbon Journal article ftanucanberra https://doi.org/10.1017/RDC.2018.129 2023-12-15T09:34:40Z Accurately dating when people first colonized new areas is vital for understanding the pace of past cultural and environmental changes, including questions of mobility, human impacts and human responses to climate change. Establishing effective chronologies of these events requires the synthesis of multiple radiocarbon (14C) dates. Various “chronometric hygiene” protocols have been used to refine 14C dating of island colonization, but they can discard up to 95% of available 14C dates leaving very small datasets for further analysis. Despite their foundation in sound theory, without independent tests we cannot know if these protocols are apt, too strict or too lax. In Iceland, an ice core-dated tephrochronology of the archaeology of first settlement enables us to evaluate the accuracy of 14C chronologies. This approach demonstrated that the inclusion of a wider range of 14C samples in Bayesian models improves the precision, but does not affect the model outcome. Therefore, based on our assessments, we advocate a new protocol that works with a much wider range of samples and where outlying 14C dates are systematically disqualified using Bayesian Outlier Models. We show that this approach can produce robust termini ante quos for colonization events and may be usefully applied elsewhere. This project was funded by the Icelandic Centre for Research (Rannís, 121153- 0061), the Watanabe Trust fund and the National Science Foundation (USA, NSF 1202692 and NSF 1249313) Article in Journal/Newspaper ice core Iceland Australian National University: ANU Digital Collections Radiocarbon 61 2 629 647 |
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Australian National University: ANU Digital Collections |
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English |
description |
Accurately dating when people first colonized new areas is vital for understanding the pace of past cultural and environmental changes, including questions of mobility, human impacts and human responses to climate change. Establishing effective chronologies of these events requires the synthesis of multiple radiocarbon (14C) dates. Various “chronometric hygiene” protocols have been used to refine 14C dating of island colonization, but they can discard up to 95% of available 14C dates leaving very small datasets for further analysis. Despite their foundation in sound theory, without independent tests we cannot know if these protocols are apt, too strict or too lax. In Iceland, an ice core-dated tephrochronology of the archaeology of first settlement enables us to evaluate the accuracy of 14C chronologies. This approach demonstrated that the inclusion of a wider range of 14C samples in Bayesian models improves the precision, but does not affect the model outcome. Therefore, based on our assessments, we advocate a new protocol that works with a much wider range of samples and where outlying 14C dates are systematically disqualified using Bayesian Outlier Models. We show that this approach can produce robust termini ante quos for colonization events and may be usefully applied elsewhere. This project was funded by the Icelandic Centre for Research (Rannís, 121153- 0061), the Watanabe Trust fund and the National Science Foundation (USA, NSF 1202692 and NSF 1249313) |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
Schmid, Magdalena Wood, Rachel Newton, A Vésteinsson, Orri Dugmore, Andrew J |
spellingShingle |
Schmid, Magdalena Wood, Rachel Newton, A Vésteinsson, Orri Dugmore, Andrew J Enhancing radiocarbon chronologies of colonization: Chronometric hygiene revisited |
author_facet |
Schmid, Magdalena Wood, Rachel Newton, A Vésteinsson, Orri Dugmore, Andrew J |
author_sort |
Schmid, Magdalena |
title |
Enhancing radiocarbon chronologies of colonization: Chronometric hygiene revisited |
title_short |
Enhancing radiocarbon chronologies of colonization: Chronometric hygiene revisited |
title_full |
Enhancing radiocarbon chronologies of colonization: Chronometric hygiene revisited |
title_fullStr |
Enhancing radiocarbon chronologies of colonization: Chronometric hygiene revisited |
title_full_unstemmed |
Enhancing radiocarbon chronologies of colonization: Chronometric hygiene revisited |
title_sort |
enhancing radiocarbon chronologies of colonization: chronometric hygiene revisited |
publisher |
Cambridge University Press |
url |
http://hdl.handle.net/1885/201511 https://doi.org/10.1017/RDC.2018.129 https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/bitstream/1885/201511/5/01_Schmid_Enhancing_radiocarbon_2019.pdf.jpg |
genre |
ice core Iceland |
genre_facet |
ice core Iceland |
op_source |
Radiocarbon |
op_relation |
0033-8222 http://hdl.handle.net/1885/201511 doi:10.1017/RDC.2018.129 https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/bitstream/1885/201511/5/01_Schmid_Enhancing_radiocarbon_2019.pdf.jpg |
op_rights |
© 2019 by the Arizona Board of Regents on behalf of the University of Arizona |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1017/RDC.2018.129 |
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Radiocarbon |
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61 |
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2 |
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629 |
op_container_end_page |
647 |
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1788062055499038720 |