Marine reservoir effect deduced from 14C dates on marine shells and terrestrial remains at archeological sites in Japan

Abstract

Paired marine and terrestrial samples were collected at archeological shell mounds in Kagoshima, Saga and Aichi prefectures and selected from sediment samples bored at the Mawaki archeological site in Ishikawa prefecture, to evaluate the local marine reservoir effect in Japan. The local reservoir corrections, ΔR, were evaluated to be 8±110 and −178±113 14C years for Miyasaka shell mound, −125±50 to −45±49 and −86±48 to −21±50 14C years for Higashimyo shell mound, −46±52, 40±44, −136±44 and 100±44 14C years for Yoshigo shell mound, −255±38 and −146±46 14C years for Kuzubasama shell mound, −71±33, −30±85 and −78±74 14C years on average for C4, C5 and C6 cores, respectively, from the Mawaki site. The existing data along with the present results suggest that the ΔR values obtained for central to southern part of Japan are consistent with zero or a bit negative, but are different from the ΔR values of 200 to 500 14C years for the northern parts of the Japanese archipelago.