Reassessment of Radiocarbon Age Determinations for the Munkers Creek Phase

Abstract

The Munkers Creek phase was initially defined using cultural assemblages from the William Young site in the north central Flint Hills of Kansas. Radiocarbon ages from the type site are suspect due to extremely large standard deviations on all but one date and because of stratigraphic inconsistencies. Recently, samples of curated wood charcoal from stratigraphically separate cultural levels at the William Young site were submitted for dating in an attempt to better ascertain the age range for the site’s Munkers Creek phase cultural components. The new radiocarbon ages are more precise and are stratigraphically consistent. These new assays and all other contemporaneous radiocarbon dates from other Munkers Creek phase contexts have an average age of 5259 ± 26 B.P. with a three sigma range of 5180-5338 B.P. The sum of the areas under the polynomial curves using decadal means indicates the mean to be ∼5240 B.P. The new dates and this statistical analysis have helped to refine our understanding of the temporal placement of the Munkers Creek phase in the Kansas prehistoric cultural sequence.