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Freshwater Reservoir Effect Variability in Northern Germany

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 February 2016

Bente Philippsen  and
Jan Heinemeier
Bente Philippsen*
Affiliation:
AMS 14C Dating Centre, Dept. of Physics and Astronomy, Aarhus University, Ny Munkegade 120, 8000 Aarhus C, Denmark
Jan Heinemeier
Affiliation:
AMS 14C Dating Centre, Dept. of Physics and Astronomy, Aarhus University, Ny Munkegade 120, 8000 Aarhus C, Denmark
*
1Corresponding author. Email: [email protected].
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Abstract

The freshwater reservoir effect is a potential problem when radiocarbon dating fish bones, shells, human bones, or food crusts on pottery from sites near rivers or lakes. The reservoir age in hardwater rivers can be up to several thousand years and may be highly variable. Accurate 14C dating of freshwater-based samples requires knowing the order of magnitude of the reservoir effect and its degree of variability. Measurements on modern riverine materials may not give a single reservoir age correction that can be applied to archaeological samples, but they show the order of magnitude and variability that can also be expected for the past. This knowledge will be applied to the dating of food crusts on pottery from the Mesolithic sites Kayhude at the Alster River and Schlamersdorf at the Trave River, both in Schleswig-Holstein, northern Germany.

Type
Radiocarbon Reservoir Effects
Information
Radiocarbon , Volume 55 , Issue 3: Proceedings of the 21st International Radiocarbon Conference (Part 2 of 2) , 2013 , pp. 1085 - 1101
Copyright
Copyright © 2013 by the Arizona Board of Regents on behalf of the University of Arizona 

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