An Application of Hierarchical Bayesian Modeling to Upper Paleolithic Archaeological Cultures in France between 32 and 21 cal ka BP

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Constructing Chronologies I: Stratification and Correlation" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Investigations of chronology play a key role in the majority of archaeological research endeavors and are particularly pertinent to examinations of culture-environment relationships, especially during periods marked by pronounced climatic variability. Rigorous evaluations of data and robust methods are necessary to reconstruct reliable chronologies, and this is especially true for periods associated with relatively few radiometric measurements. Such is the case for the Upper Paleolithic archaeological record of present-day France from 32,000 to 21,000 cal BP. We rely on critically examined radiocarbon measurements from contextually secure archaeological contexts and employ a recently developed method of Hierarchical Bayesian Modeling to reconstruct the chronology of archaeological cultures from the Middle Gravettian to the Badegoulian. The resulting chronological intervals for each typo-technologically defined cultural phase are compared climatic records thereby permitting each to be correlated with documented paleoclimatic variability. These results are evaluated by producing an age model with the new IntCal20 calibration curve and then comparing it to a subsequent model that incorporates numerous recently obtained radiocarbon ages. This approach for constructing regional chronologies represents a significant improvement over methods employed to date because it takes into account all available radiometric data via an intersecting multiphase age model.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)   •
• Constructing Chronologies I: Stratification and Correlation

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 32247