Vital evidence: Change in the marine ¹⁴C reservoir around New Zealand (Aotearoa) and implications for the timing of Polynesian settlement.

ABSTRACT: Precise and accurate radiocarbon chronologies are essential to achieve tight chronological control for the ~ 750-years since Polynesian settlement of New Zealand. This goal has, however, been elusive. While radiocarbon datasets in the region are typically dominated by marine and estuarine shell dates, such chronological information has been ignored by those interpreting the timing of key events because a detailed regional calibration methodology for marine shell, comparable to the highly precise Southern Hemisphere calibration curve, is lacking. In this paper, we present the first temporal ¹⁴C marine offset (ΔR) model for New Zealand based on paired estuarine/marine and terrestrial radiocarbon dates from 52 archaeological contexts. Our dataset displays significant offsets betwee

SUBMITTER: Petchey F 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7458910 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature