McEuen Cave (AZ W:13:6 (ASM)) is a large bedrock rockshelter located within an andesitic rocky ash flow tuff/ignimbrite within the Bureau of Land Management’s Fishhooks Wilderness Area near Fort Thomas, Arizona. Exceptional preservation at the site has produced an extensive assemblage of perishable artifacts, including a tremendous quantity of cultigen remains radiocarbon dated between 3600 BP and 1250 BP. In this paper, we provide the results of a new radiocarbon dating effort aimed at identifying additional early Silverbell Interval cultigens and clarifying the intensity and persistence of Early Agricultural Period occupation. Our goal is to better understand the age and extent of early cultivation activities within this high-elevation wilderness and contextualize the remains from this site with the more thoroughly understood co-eval Early Agricultural Period villages evidenced along major riverways such as the San Pedro and Santa Cruz in southern Arizona. [Spanish language abstract: La cueva McEuen (AZ W:13:6 (ASM)) es un gran refugio rocoso de lecho rocoso ubicado dentro de una toba/ignimbrita de flujo de cenizas rocosas andesíticas dentro del área silvestre Fishhooks de la Oficina de Administración de Tierras cerca de Fort Thomas, Arizona. La preservación excepcional en el sitio ha producido un extenso conjunto de artefactos perecederos, incluyendo una tremenda cantidad de restos de cultígenos fechados por radiocarbono entre 3600 BP y 1250 BP. En este documento, proporcionamos los resultados de un nuevo esfuerzo de datación por radiocarbono destinado a identificar cultígenos adicionales del Arcaico tardío-medio y aclarar la intensidad y persistencia de la ocupación del Período Agrícola Temprano. Nuestro objetivo es comprender mejor la edad y el alcance de las actividades de cultivo tempranas dentro de este desierto de gran altitud y contextualizar los restos de este sitio con las aldeas coeval del Período Agrícola Temprano mejor entendidas evidenciadas a lo largo de las principales vías fluviales como el San Pedro y el Santa Cruz en el sur de Arizona.]

This paper considers the complex entanglements from which stones and stone craftspeople emerged in the precolonial Maya world. Drawing from recent scholarship that emphasizes the relational and processual nature of making and knowing, it adopts a multi-practice perspective to explore how humans transformed limestone into knowable and workable materials and how, in turn, limestone transformed humans into knowledgeable and skilled individuals. Geoarchaeological, archaeometric, and experimental data from the central and northern Maya lowlands are combined to identify choices and preferences in selecting, extracting, and processing calcareous materials, and to examine what these reveal about past knowledge and skills. We then turn our attention to the ways in which quarry workers, lime producers, and toolmakers learned to work with stone. We argue that becoming attuned to limestone was a sociomaterial process that involved repeated interactions with both material elements and social actors. Our discussion highlights the active role of limestone not only in shaping learning experiences but also in facilitating connections between diverse practices, and thus contributing to a dynamic, interconnected landscape of knowledge.

Late Iron Age and Early Roman human depictions are often thought to display stylistic influences from European La Tène art and, later, Roman classical art. However, with the analysis of metal figurines attributed to the period, many reported to the Portable Antiquities Scheme, this paper argues that some of these artefacts could include stylistic influences from an earlier wooden tradition, which appears to originate in the Bronze Age. This paper therefore presents a new hypothesis regarding the development of anthropomorphic art in later Iron Age Britain, whilst also highlighting the importance of contributions of data from the Portable Antiquities Scheme.

The Neolithic of the northeastern Iranian Plateau is defined basically by the materials recovered from the twin mounds of Sang-e Chakhmaq, the West Mound and the East Mound. The radiocarbon dates from these mounds span almost two thousand years, from around 7000 BCE to the last centuries of the sixth millennium BCE, with a chronological hiatus between ca. 6700–6200 BCE. Recent excavations at a proto-ceramic Neolithic site, Rouyan, in the vicinity of Sang-e Chakhmaq, provided occupational evidence, augmented by a series of Radiocarbon dates, which fill in the long-standing temporal hiatus of the Neolithic of the region. Both 14C dates and archaeological evidence from this excavation suggests that Rouyan was founded simultaneously with the West Mound of Sang-e Chakhmaq, but its occupation continued without discontinuity into the fifth millennium BCE. The excavation also yielded a small ceramic assemblage from the earliest deposits of the site, indicating the site’s first settlers were familiar with this technology as early as ca. 7000 BCE.

In this article, we present the first results from radiocarbon dating of the Kirakle-Tobe settlement located in the central part of the Volga River Delta, southern Russia. Archaeological artifacts and 14C measurements on charcoal indicate three stages of settlement development on the Kirakle-Tobe knoll. The oldest 14C age corresponds to the Late Sarmatian period—early 4th century CE. The abundance of archaeological artifacts associated with the 6th–8th centuries CE indicates a long period of occupation. The youngest 14C age presumably corresponds to the Khazarian period (9th century CE). These results suggest dynamic human activity in the central part of the Volga River Delta during the Great Migration Period. These initial results can be used to verify the impact of fluctuations in the Caspian Sea level on the Volga River Delta during the Great Migration Period.

We investigated radiocarbon dates of human bone samples from several medieval sites in Trondheim, central Norway. Stable isotope data was used to estimate marine correction for the radiocarbon dates, which is necessary to correct the radiocarbon ages and establish age models for the archaeological layers. We observed that a marine correction without ΔR does not lead to a well-defined model for all sites. Allowing a variable ΔR improves the model, which indicates that food sources and trade routes have changed over time, influencing the mobility of food resources as well as of people. However, this does not work for all sites, indicating that variation of reservoir ages could also be the result of individual preferences for the food and that fish with different ΔR, and thus different geographical origin, was consumed during the same periods. Many radiocarbon and stable isotope (δ13C, δ15N) measurements have been carried out for the project. We calculated %marine consumption from the isotope values and found that it varies greatly, between 7% and 51%, and apparently independent of period, social status, churchyard location or other factors. Based on these data, we determined average reservoir ages for the marine food consumed in Trondheim during different phases, varying between ΔR = –150 and 280 years.

Radiocarbon (14C) dating is a powerful tool for establishing reliable chronologies for proxy records recovered from environmental archives, including lacustrine sediments. However, lacustrine sediments are often limited with respect to availability of material such as terrestrial macrofossils that are traditionally targeted for 14C dating. Flow cytometry, in combination with physicochemical preprocessing, is an emerging technique for the isolation of pollen from terrestrial sediments, holding the promise of pollen recovery of sufficient purity and efficiency for routine 14C analysis. Here, we examine the performance of this approach by undertaking a comprehensive blank assessment for a new pollen isolation protocol and comparing pollen-14C data against established chronologies for two lake records. Our procedure yields consistent values for constant contamination with extraneous carbon of 1.34±0.40 µg C and an F14C of 0.85±0.04, rendering our method suitable for microscale 14C analysis. The pollen-14C data are largely in agreement with age estimates for the same layers of the lake sediment cores based on macrofossil-14C analysis and tephrochronology. However, we also observe that our pollen samples appear to be, on average, slightly older than their macrofossil counterparts. We hypothesize this to be the result of sedimentary and translocation processes that retard pollen transport and lacustrine deposition.

En este trabajo presentamos los resultados del análisis traceológico de una muestra cerámica procedente de sitios arqueológicos del sector meridional del valle de Abaucán (Tinogasta, Catamarca, Argentina), con el objetivo de visualizar cadenas operativas de los procesos de modelado durante el primer milenio de la era. Para ello la muestra seleccionada, de contextos arqueológicos y relevamientos de piezas de museos, fue sometida al análisis de traza a través de la propuesta de García Roselló y Calvo Trías (2013). Adicionalmente, nos valimos de la experimentación como método de estudio para observar el proceso de manufactura de forma directa y obtener un parámetro controlado que permita la comparación con el material arqueológico. Los resultados brindaron datos con un alto grado de detalle del levantado de las piezas, relacionando las trazas con elecciones técnicas específicas, con herramientas y gestos manuales aplicados por los alfareros en el pasado del oeste de Catamarca.

We report new AMS radiocarbon dates of 16 samples from the Holocene deposits of the Vistula Spit, a large coastal barrier landform on the Southern Baltic coast. Collection of the samples was conducted directly from the sedimentary succession excavated during 2020–2022 construction of the Vistula Spit shipping canal. The dated material represents several paleosol horizons and peat lenses buried in the dune deposits, as well as their substrate – beach and shallow marine deposits.

The bulk organic-matter content of near-surface sediment is widely used for radiocarbon (14C) dating, despite often containing organic carbon (OC) older than the depositional age. Low-temperature combustion can mitigate the influence of old OC, producing ages closer to the depositional age. We developed a simple method to determine the 14C age of the low-temperature (<250°C) component of bulk sediment. Sediment samples from five Arctic lakes were heated up to 400°C, revealing that at 250°C, about half of the OC combusts, leaving behind the more recalcitrant fraction. We applied this method to 64 samples from late glacial and Holocene sediment cores, analyzing 14C and % OC in two aliquots: one heated at 250°C and one unheated. The low-temperature 14C age was calculated by difference using a two-component mixing model. Accuracy was assessed by comparing ages with macrofossils from 48 samples, and reproducibility was tested using a standard reference material. Results show that low-temperature combustion yields 14C ages with an interquartile range of 115 years, and with reproducibility on par with that of macrofossil dating. On average, the ages differ by 932 years from macrofossils, compared to a 2425-year difference for conventional bulk-sediment ages analyzed in this study. Accuracy improves for samples where the proportion of residual OC after heating is low. This practical and efficient method complements macrofossil dating, supports analysis of a large number of samples, and provides insights into sedimentary carbon cycling.

The use of ultrafiltration remains a subject of ongoing debate among pretreatment methods employed in radiocarbon dating of mammalian archaeological bone. However, such discourse had not previously extended to the archaeology of the Canary Islands (Spain), where detailed descriptions of laboratory processing methods for collagen purification often remain absent. Our study presents a case study involving a new set of radiocarbon dates obtained from the remains of ancient natives of Tenerife Island. For the first time in this region, we compared the results of ultrafiltered with non-ultrafiltered collagen from the same individuals, focusing on the method’s implications for dating accuracy in the Canaries. Through an examination of the cleaning protocols of ultrafilters and an assessment of the reliability of radiocarbon dating outcomes, we have found that ultrafiltration may influence the accuracy of results. However, given the additional handling required and the potential risk of contaminating the samples, its application should be carefully considered. In the context of the Canary Islands, ultrafiltration may be most relevant for samples associated with early human occupation, though further research is needed to assess its necessity across different biogeographical contexts. This communication further contributes to a broader understanding of preparation methods for radiocarbon dating bone from various environmental contexts, emphasizing the uniqueness of each case. Furthermore, we discuss the implications of our findings for archaeological research in the Canary Islands, highlighting the methodological gaps that persist in the region and underscoring the importance of ensuring the accuracy and reliability of chronological interpretations in archaeological investigations.