Frontier of Radiocarbon Dating: New Generation of the Calibration Curve
Name
Jianghan_Archaeology_Ruiliang_Liu_and_Richard_Staff.pdf
Description
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Size
5.8 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (CRC64NVME)
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Resource type
Journal article
Date published
2020
Abstract
Undoubtedly, radiocarbon dating has become one of the most important approaches to reconstructing archaeological chronologies across the globe. However, any uncalibrated radiocarbon measurements, which are often expressed in "radiocarbon years BP"(before present, 1950 AD), have to be calibrated against the internationally agreed calibration curve in order to provide the authentic calendar years. In 2020, updated radiocarbon calibration curves have been released and have triggered wide discussion in various disciplines. The most pressing issue for archaeologists is whether the new calibration curve causes changes to the previous chronological interpretation. If so, to what extent do archaeologists need to modify their existing chronologies to accommodate these changes? Here, we provide a series of qualitative and quantitative comparisons between the new and old calibration curves (IntCa120 versus IntCa113). In conclusion, despite the major differences observed for the periods of before 30000 BP and 11000-10000 BP, there appears no other significant changes between the two curves. This suggests that the current chronology for Neolithic and Bronze Age China remains robust in the light of the new calibration curve lntCal20.
Journal title
Jianghan Archaeology
Volume
8
Keywords