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The Suess Calibration Curve and Archaeological Dating

Abstract

SUESS1 was the first to publish an extensive calibration curve, based on dendrochronology, relating radiocarbon dates to absolute time lapse, a procedure made necessary by fluctuations in the concentration of 14C in the Earth's atmosphere over the last few millenia. Other calibrations followed2–5, but Suess's revised curve6 is still the most widely used by archaeologists (cf.7). It contains a number of re-entrant kinks or “wriggles”, which give from two to seven possibilities when it is used to derive an absolute date from a “conventional” 14C date, in some regions of the curve. Other curves2,5 also contain one major and several minor wriggles.

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OTTAWAY, B., OTTAWAY, J. The Suess Calibration Curve and Archaeological Dating. Nature 239, 512–513 (1972). https://doi.org/10.1038/239512a0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/239512a0

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