Issues in Building Radiocarbon Chronologies

Part of: Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

The use of radiocarbon dates to reconstruct historical patterns of demography and behavior proceeds via processes of sample selection, measurement, calibration, compilation, exploratory data analysis, analytical statistics, and interpretation. This session brings together scholars refining facets of these processes in an effort to advance the overall ambition of making history visible via c14 dating. Topics include marine reservoir calibration, population dynamics via summed probability, Bayesian analyses of c14 data sets, methodological issues in measurement, calibration issues and systemic biases, taphonomic effects, and the potential for developing continental databases.