Applications of Wiggle-Match Dating in North American Historical Archaeology

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Wiggle-match dating (WMD) of tree-ring sequences facilitates high-resolution radiocarbon dating in historical archaeology, a period notorious for an imprecise radiocarbon record. We demonstrate the application of WMD in historical archaeology with two case studies: (1) a cypress dugout logboat exhibiting a unique combination of European and Native American design elements; and (2) a tulippoplar wood trough utilized by an enslaved workforce in the production of saltpeter. From each object, multiple individual tree rings were sampled from exposed, rough cross-sections in the wood, with no or minimal surface preparation, to preserve these fragile objects. The samples were radiocarbon dated by AMS. To account for uncertainty in ring counts, the resulting dates were modeled in OxCal using the Sequence and Interval functions, rather than the D_Sequence and Gap functions that are more commonly used in wiggle-match dating. By this method, we dated the outermost tree ring of each object to within 30 years: the logboat to 1766–1796 cal AD, and the trough to 1778–1804 cal AD (95% highest posterior density range). This study demonstrates that in some cases, high-precision dating can be achieved for 18th–19th century objects through wiggle-match dating, with minimal damage to the objects of study.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36585.0