Radiocarbon test for demographic events in written and oral history

• Published in: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
• Main Authors: Edinborough, Kevan, Porčić, Marko, Martindale, Andrew, Brown, Thomas Jay, Supernant, Kisha, Ames, Kenneth M.
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: National Academy of Sciences 2017
• Subjects: Social Sciences; Tsimshian; Tsimshian*
• Online Access: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5703313/; http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29087334; https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1713012114

Indigenous oral traditions remain a very controversial source of historical knowledge in Western scientific, humanistic, and legal traditions. Likewise, demographic models using radiocarbon-based simulation methods are controversial. We rigorously test the historicity of indigenous Tsimshian oral records (adawx) using an extended simulation-based method. Our methodology is able to detect short-duration (1–2 centuries) demographic events. First, we successfully test the methodology against a simulated radiocarbon dataset for the catastrophic European Black Death/bubonic plague (Yersinia pestis). Second, we test the Tsimshian adawx accounts of an occupational hiatus in their territorial heartland ca. 1,500–1,000 years ago. We are unable to disconfirm the oral accounts. This represents the first formal test of indigenous oral traditions using modern radiocarbon modeling techniques.