Radiocarbon and Luminescence Age Determinations on Mounds at Crystal River and Roberts Island, Florida, USA

Abstract

Optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) has been employed successfully to determine the ages of palaeosols from earthen mounds in the southeastern USA, providing archaeologists with a means of dating monument construction in the absence of carbonaceous materials and geologists with a setting for understanding factors that can affect the luminescence intensity (i.e., burial dose) of soils. However, OSL dating has not been adequately tested on mounds whose principal component is sand, shell, or a combination of these two, despite the fact that monuments composed of such materials are common to the coasts and interior coastal plains of the region. Radiocarbon dating of bone collagen and soil‐carbon and OSL dating of quartz grains extracted from the fill of mounds at the Crystal River and Roberts Island sites on the west‐central coast of Florida, USA are used to determine the timing and history of mound construction at the sites. Comparison of OSL and radiocarbon ages on materials from the same or closely related contexts provides insight into factors influencing age determinations in mound fill deposits, particularly the type of construction material (sand or shell) and the manner in which these were deposited. The results contribute to the understanding of the temporal context of platform mound construction in southeastern USA.