Will Summing of Radiocarbon Dates Unlock Scales of Socio-environmental Transformations?

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Constructing Chronologies II: The Big Picture with Bayes and Beyond" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Demography is a key factor in investigating the relationships between population levels, along with resource availability, environmental dynamics, social organization, and mobility. Prehistoric human activities and population levels can be modeled using summed probability distributions of calibrated radiocarbon dates (SPD), which can be directly compared with climate trends. SPDs, however, can be complex, because they can reflect: (1) population growth/decline represented by peaks/troughs in the analysis, (2) human mobility, (3) plateaus in the calibration curve, or (4) sampling bias. Using kernel density estimation modeling, this paper evaluates a new comprehensive radiocarbon dataset from New Zealand (n = 2,200), which is the best dated example of island colonization in the Pacific and has a relatively short 750-year period of settlement. This project develops a regional and temporal marine reservoir curve which enables, for the first time, integration of 950 shell dates in chronological models. A combination of terrestrial and marine radiocarbon ages provides more precise temporal control of archaeological sites relating to Polynesian settlement and subsequent key markers of Maori prehistory, ultimately shedding new light on the impacts of the Little Ice Age on human demography.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Constructing Chronologies II: The Big Picture with Bayes and Beyond   •
• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 32953