The NERD Dataset: Near East Radiocarbon Dates between 15,000 and 1,500 cal. yr. BP

Alessio Palmisano,Andrew Bevan,Stephen Shennan,Dan Lawrence

doi:10.5334/joad.90

Abstract

To our knowledge, the dataset described in this paper represents the largest existing repository of uncalibrated radiocarbon dates for the whole Near East from the Late Pleistocene to the Late Holocene (15,000 – 1,500 cal. yr. BP). It is composed of 11,027 radiocarbon dates from 1,023 sites that have been collected comprehensively by cross-checking multiple sources (extant digital archives and databases, edited volumes, monographs, journals papers, archaeological excavation reports, etc.) under the umbrella of the Leverhulme Trust funded project “Changing the Face of the Mediterranean” and of the ERC project “CLASS – Climate, Landscape, Settlement and Society: Exploring Human-Environment Interaction in the Ancient Near East”. This is an ongoing dataset that will be updated step by step with newly published radiocarbon dates.

Highlights

CONTEXT The present dataset was created under the scope of the Leverhulme Trust funded project “Changing the Face of the Mediterranean” as a part of two regional case studies ([1, 2], for the special issue see [3]) and of the ERC project “CLASS – Climate, Landscape, Settlement and Society: Exploring Human-Environment Interaction in the Ancient Near East”
Large lists of radiocarbon dates from archaeological contexts can be calibrated and counted up as a proxy for population, based on the assumption that the more people living in a given region, the more the archaeological deposits, the more organic materials, and the more radiocarbon samples collected and dated
As a consequence, summed probability distributions (SPDs) of calibrated radiocarbon dates have become popular for inferring demographic trends in prehistory and for assessing population response to climate shifts and the anthropic impact on landscapes [4–10]

Summary

Introduction

We did not obfuscate the locations of radiocarbon dates because they come from excavated archaeological sites whose coordinates are widely available through unrestricted resources publicly accessible (e.g., published archaeological surveys reports, monographies, digital publications, geographic tags in Google Earth, existing online databases).

Results

Conclusion