Radiocarbon dating inferences

Figure 11. Hustedt pH categories (26), diatom-inferred pH values (weighted averaging), calibration radiocarbon dates, 210Pb dates, and pH periods in the history of Lilia Oresjon, southwest Sweden. Each bar and point represents one of the 700 samples analyzed from each 0.5-cm interval from the 350-cm-long core. (Reproduced with permission from reference 68. Copyright 1990 Royal Society of London.)...

Is Aruttas is the only coastal site tested. Skeletal materials were recovered in a cave a few hundred meters from the shore, located in a marshy and sandy area on the central-west coast of Sardinia. The stratigraphic context was disrupted by looters, and potteiy sherds found associated were attributed to the final phase of the Late Neolithic. One radiocarbon date, though, shifted the chronology to the Middle Bronze Age (1600-1300 B.C.). From the physical fitness and low caries of the recovered human remains, a well balanced diet has been inferred (43, 50, 51). 

The first uses of radiocarbon in deep-sea core dating were based on few data points and depended on extrapolation assuming the constant rate of titanium deposition (Arrhenius et al., 1951) or interpolation (Suess, 1956) for determination of rates of accumulation and chronology. The first systematic study of radiocarbon incorporating possible changes in accumulation rates with depth in a core was performed by Broecker et al. (1958). They showed that accumulation rates of both the carbonate fraction and the detrital fraction varied with time in the equatorial Atlantic and those variations were linked to paleoclimatic indicators inferred from paleontologic data (Figure 3). 

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