Search results for "Radiocarbon"
showing 10 items of 134 documents
The “chimney forest” of the deep Montenegrin margin, south-eastern Adriatic Sea
2015
A spectacular field of columnar carbonates has been discovered on the Montenegrin margin in the southern Adriatic Sea at a depth of about 450 m. The site exposes many columnar carbonates protruding from the substrate or abated on the bottom. Such carbonates attain maximum visible lengths of ca. 60 cm with diameters up to 20 cm; display an annular growth, and are either hollow or plugged by indurated sediment. Petrographic and geochemical analyses document the pervasive presence of dolomite, and delta C-13 values as low as -30%(0) VPDB. These 'chimneys' are therefore interpreted as former conduits related to hydrocarbon expulsion in this sector of the Adriatic basin. However, available data …
Alternative Stories of Agricultural Origins: The Neolithic Spread in the Iberian Peninsula
2017
The spread of agriculture from the Near East to Europe has long been a subject of intense archaeological study and debate in light of the social and economic changes that occurred and were set in motion as a result of this transition. Despite the attention paid to this important process, a consensus is far from being reached. Perhaps for these reasons, new methods and theoretical approaches have often been applied to the questions surrounding the spread of agriculture first. Recently, computational modeling has emerged as a promising technique for the study of the origins of agriculture. Our approach employs an agent-based computational model of agricultural spread for the Iberian Peninsula…
The origins of agriculture in Iberia: a computational model
2015
Here we discuss the importance of using the rich and growing database of high-precision, audited radiocarbon dates for high-resolution bottom-up modelling to focus on problems concerning the spread of the Neolithic in the Iberia. We also compare the spread of the Late Mesolithic (so-called Geometric) and the Early Neolithic using our modelling environment. Our results suggest that the source of radiocarbon data used to evaluate alternative hypotheses plays an important role in the results and open up new lines of research for the future.
The beginning of the Neolithic in Nerja cave and la Cova de la Sarsa. Archaeological context and radiocarbon dating
2018
Las dataciones radiocarbónicas resultan una herramienta útil para establecer el marco cronológicode los contextos arqueológicos, aunque en ocasiones el adjetivo de «absoluto» se convierte en una categoría. En el caso del Neolítico antiguo, la selección de muestras singulares de vida corta de especies domésticas o restos de Homo sapiens en contextos neolíticos pretendía definir con mayor precisión la cronología de los momentos iniciales de su llegada a la península ibérica. Los casos documentados en las cuevas de Nerja y Sarsa son un buen ejemplo del debate que generan sus resultados, la problemática de sus secuencias y el contexto de discusión regional. Se muestran los resultados tras la va…
Millennial-scale phase relationships between ice-core and Mediterranean marine records: insights from high-precision 40Ar/39Ar dating of the Green Tu…
2013
International audience; With the advent of annually-resolved polar ice records extending back to 70 ka, marine and continental paleoclimate studies have now matured into a discipline where high-quality age control is essential for putting on an equal pace layer-counted timescale models and Late Quaternary sedimentary records. High-resolution U-Th dating of speleothem records and 40Ar/39Ar dating of globally recorded geomagnetic excursions have recently improved the time calibration of Quaternary archives, reflecting the cross-disciplinary effort made to synchronize the geologic record at the millennial scale. Yet, tie-points with such an absolute age control remain scarce for paleoclimatic …
Last Glacial Human Settlement in Eastern Cantabria (Northern Spain)
2002
While the excavation of individual sites remains fundamental to the creation of the Palaeolithic archeological record, increasingly the focus of prehistoric research is on human adaptations to and within natural regions. Such a reorientation implies viewing sites and occupations as samples of different suites of activities in various habitats across space and time; it is dependent on the use of radiocarbon to date and relate occupation residues among sites; and it necessitates the application of methods to uncover patterns of human mobility as an integral aspect of subsistence economy, demographic arrangements and social relations. This paper contributes to the regional study of Last Glacia…
Illuminating Intcal During the Younger Dryas
2020
As the worldwide standard for radiocarbon (14C) dating over the past ca. 50,000 years, the International Calibration Curve (IntCal) is continuously improving towards higher resolution and replication. Tree-ring-based 14C measurements provide absolute dating throughout most of the Holocene, although high-precision data are limited for the Younger Dryas interval and farther back in time. Here, we describe the dendrochronological characteristics of 1448 new 14C dates, between ~11,950 and 13,160 cal BP, from 13 pines that were growing in Switzerland. Significantly enhancing the ongoing IntCal update (IntCal20), this Late Glacial (LG) compilation contains more annually precise 14C dates than any…
Mas dâIs (Penàguila, Alicante): farms and Early Neolithic causewayed camps in the Serpis valley
2003
In this paper, results from recent archaeological field work carried out in the Neolithic village of Mas d’Is (Penaguila, Alicante) are presented. We focus on an important set of domestic and monumental architectural structures. Integration of data from the site in a regional context allows us to rethink the social relations of the first farmers in the area. At the same time, radiocarbon data from our excavations show a finer chronology of the neolithization in Western Mediterranean, and what is more important to approach its historical process.
Alternative chronologies for Late Quaternary (Last Interglacial–Holocene) deep sea sediments via optical dating of silt-sized quartz
2003
Abstract We summarize the results of a test on the potential of optical dating for the age assessment of Late Quaternary deep-sea sediments. Our approach combines a single aliquot regeneration (SAR) protocol for equivalent dose ( D e ) estimation on fine silt-sized quartz with a time-dependent evaluation of supported and unsupported long-lived radioisotopes within the deposited sediment matrix. For this purpose nine samples from two independently dated deep-sea cores from the Indian Ocean were obtained. The SAR analysis resulted in mean D e estimates with precisions ranging from 0.9% to 3.7%. Combination of these data with measured radioisotope concentrations resulted in stratigraphically s…
Multi-proxy dating of Holocene maar lakes and Pleistocene dry maar sediments in the Eifel, Germany
2013
Abstract During the last twelve years the ELSA Project (Eifel Laminated Sediment Archive) at Mainz University has drilled a total of about 52 cores from 27 maar lakes and filled-in maar basins in the Eifel/Germany. Dating has been completed for the Holocene cores using 6 different methods (210Pb and 137Cs activities, palynostratigraphy, event markers, varve counting, 14C). In general, the different methods consistently complement one another within error margins. Event correlation was used for relating typical lithological changes with historically known events such as the two major Holocene flood events at 1342 AD and ca 800 BC. Dating of MIS2–MIS3 core sections is based on greyscale tunin…