A Database of Radiocarbon Dates for Palaeoenvironmental Research in Eastern Africa

Colin J Courtney Mustaphi ,Rob Marchant

doi:10.5334/oq.22

Abstract

Radiocarbon dating is one of the most widely available and applied techniques to develop Late Quaternary chronologies of many ecosystems and is, thus, utilized in Quaternary studies, archaeology, hydrology, geomorphology, palaeoanthropology, palaeoclimatology, palaeoecology, palaeontology, and isotope analyses. A manual literature review search of published radiocarbon dates from eastern Africa was undertaken to store these data in the open-access format and included in the Canadian Archaeological Radiocarbon Database. Dates ranged from 57,804 to 0 14C years Before Present. The format of the database permits expansion of the dataset in the future and permits local, regional and global scale analyses of radiocarbon dates. This paper expands on some of these potential research areas and promote archiving of African data.

Highlights

(1) Overview Introduction Increasingly, the ecological palaeoecology approach (Birks 2012; Rull 2014) is being applied to provide longterm contexts to modern ecological, human-environment interaction, conservation studies and land management policies (Willis & Birks 2006; Gillson & Marchant 2014)
An accessible archive of published radiocarbon dates from eastern Africa is necessary for robust syntheses of multisite and large spatial scale analyses of palaeoenvironmental sites (Daniau et al 2010), data-model intercomparison (Braconnot et al 2012; Marlon et al 2015), and to provide a tool for investigating past human demographics (Gayo et al 2015; Chaput et al 2015)
(2) Methods A manual literature search was conducted and published radiocarbon dates were entered from palaeoenvironmental studies, including palaeoclimatological, palaeoecological, environmental archaeology and palaeontological sources

Summary

Introduction

(1) Overview Introduction Increasingly, the ecological palaeoecology approach (Birks 2012; Rull 2014) is being applied to provide longterm contexts to modern ecological, human-environment interaction, conservation studies and land management policies (Willis & Birks 2006; Gillson & Marchant 2014). An accessible archive of published radiocarbon dates from eastern Africa is necessary for robust syntheses of multisite and large spatial scale analyses of palaeoenvironmental sites (Daniau et al 2010), data-model intercomparison (Braconnot et al 2012; Marlon et al 2015), and to provide a tool for investigating past human demographics (Gayo et al 2015; Chaput et al 2015). Courtney Mustaphi and Marchant: A Database of Radiocarbon Dates for Palaeoenvironmental Research in Eastern Africa

Results

Conclusion