Suite Of Dates Research Articles

Early Palisaded Villages in Southwestern Ontario

Abstract We review the initiation of palisade enclosed village communities in central southwestern Ontario, using data from a series of related early Late Woodland sites that we interpret as showing an east to west settlement sequence. New AMS dates based on samples of carbonized maize provide a revised chronology for the origin of village life, which began in the twelfth century. We show how villages developed alongside community pattern and ceramic attribute trends into the fourteenth-century middle Late Woodland period. A suite of dates from the most westerly site in the sequence on the Norfolk sand plain document the timing of an abrupt change in community pattern during the late fourteenth century.

Desert Migrations Project XVI: Radiocarbon Dates from the Murzuq Region, Southern Libya

AbstractThis article concerns a series of 20 samples submitted for AMS radiocarbon dating from historic sites in the Libyan Sahara. The sites had been identified initially from remote sensing analysis, then visited on the ground in 2011 and organic samples suitable for a dating programme obtained. With the help of an award from the NERC-AHRC National Radiocarbon Facility, this initial suite of dates has been provided. The results are important in several ways. They demonstrate very clearly that settlement in this hyper-arid desert landscape reached its densest pattern in the late Garamantian era, broadly the fourth-fifth centuries AD. In the Islamic era that followed, though the overall population appears less dense, our dates throw light on several possible phases of settlement renewal.

Geological Survey of Canada Soil Database

The Geological Survey of Canada (GSC) has developed, over the past decade, a user-oriented database, Date Locator File, of Canadian samples dated by the 14C technique. This database presently contains >3500 soil and soil-related dates. The primary category in this suite of dates is peat, as a large portion of the Canadian landscape is covered with this type of organic soil. The data is available gratis to all researchers in a large variety of formats from simple lists to complex tables for inclusion in publications. The site localities can also be plotted on base maps suitable for publication. The database is actively augmented on an ongoing basis, but to continue to be relevant, it depends largely on the altruism of the scientific community.

African and Asian perspectives on the origins of modern humans.

The ways in which the cultural evidence - in its chronological context - can be used to imply behavioural patterning and to identify possible causes of change are discussed. Improved reliability in dating methods, suites of dates from different regional localities, and new, firmly dated fossil hominids from crucial regions such as northeast Africa, the Levant, India and China, are essential for clarification of the origin and spread of the modern genepool. Hominid ancestry in Africa is reviewed, as well as the claims for an independent origin in Asia. The cultural differences and changes within Africa, West and South Asia and the Far East in the later Middle and early Upper Pleistocene are examined and compared, and some behavioural implications are suggested, taking account of the evolutionary frameworks suggested by the 'multiregional evolution' and 'Noah's Ark' hypotheses of human evolution. A possible explanation is proposed for the cultural differences between Africa, West Asia and India on the one hand, and southeast Asia and the Far East on the other. The apparent hiatus between the appearance of the first anatomically modern humans, ca. 100 ka ago, and the appearance of the Upper Palaeolithic and other contemporaneous technological and behavioural changes around 40 ka ago, is discussed. It is suggested that the anatomical changes occurred first, and that neurological changes permitted the development of fully syntactic language some 50 ka later. The intellectual and behavioural revolution, best demonstrated by the 'Upper Palaeolithic' of Eurasia, seems to have been dependent on this linguistic development - within the modern genepool - and triggered the rapid migration of human populations throughout the Old World.

Errors in Pre-Holocene Carbon-14 Scale: ABSTRACT

Carbon-14 dates more than about 10,000 years old are subject to at least one serious error, which is (at the moment) not amenable to correction. Wood pebbles from a single thin clay layer, in western Florida, give C-14 dates which range from 22,000 to 29,000 years, with no assurance that either of these dates is correct. C-14 dates from different wood fragments and other material in coastal zones appear to provide a data for a high stand of mean sea level during the Wisconsin at almost any time desired from 20,000 to 40,000 years ago or more. Not all of these dates can be correct, or there would have been no Wisconsin glaciation. For reasons having to do with the growth and decay mechanisms affecting continental glaciers, it is unlikely that any of these dates are correct. Regardless, there is no standard by which good dates can be distinguished from bad dates. A suite of samples which has been dated by both C-14 and K-Ar methods yields dates which differ by 1 order of magnitude or more; either the young C-14 dates represent much materials, or the older K-Ar dates represent much younger material. With no additional method of dating, one cannot be certain which type of date--if either--is correct. The likelihood of contamination is higher for the C-14 results, however, and therefore this suite of dates may include mid-Wisconsin numbers for mid-Pleistocene events. Morner has reported that a small contamination of late Wisconsin or Holocene carbon may provide mid-Wisconsin dates for pre-Wisconsin materials. End_of_Article - Last_Page 1838------------