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Accurate compound-specific 14C dating of archaeological pottery vessels

Emmanuelle Casanova 1 Timothy D. J. Knowles 1 Alex Bayliss 2 Julie Dunne 1 Marek Z. Barański 3 Anthony Denaire 4, 5 Philippe Lefranc 6, 7 Savino Di Lernia 8 Mélanie Roffet-Salque 1 Jessica Smyth 1 Alistair Barclay 9 Toby Gillard 1 Erich Claßen 10 Bryony Coles 11 Michael Ilett 12, 13 Christian Jeunesse 14, 7 Marta Krueger 15 Arkadiusz Marciniak 15 Steve Minnitt 16 Rocco Rotunno 17 Pieter van de Velde 18 Ivo van Wijk 19 Jonathan Cotton 20 Andy Daykin 20 Richard P. Evershed 1
1 University of Bristol [Bristol]
2 Historic England
3 Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk
4 UB - Université de Bourgogne
5 ARTeHiS - Archéologie, Terre, Histoire, Sociétés [Dijon]
6 Inrap - Institut national de recherches archéologiques préventives
7 ARCHIMEDE - Archéologie et histoire ancienne : Méditerranée - Europe
8 Università degli Studi di Roma "La Sapienza" [Rome]
9 Cotswold Archaeology
10 LVR-State Service for Archaeological Heritage - Bonn
11 University of Exeter
12 UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne
13 Trajectoires - UMR 8215
14 UNISTRA - Université de Strasbourg
15 UAM - Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań
16 Somerset County Museum - Taunton Castle
17 DIAG - Dipartimento di Ingegneria informatica automatica e gestionale
18 Archaeological Research Leiden
19 Leiden University
20 MOLA - Museum of London Archaeology
Abstract : Pottery is one of the most commonly recovered artefacts from archaeological sites. Despite more than a century of relative dating based on typology and seriation, accurate dating of pottery using the radiocarbon dating method has proven extremely challenging owing to the limited survival of organic temper and unreliability of visible residues. Here we report a method to directly date archaeological pottery based on accelerator mass spectrometry analysis of 14C in absorbed food residues using palmitic (C16:0) and stearic (C18:0) fatty acids purified by preparative gas chromatography We present accurate compound-specific radiocarbon determinations of lipids extracted from pottery vessels, which were rigorously evaluated by comparison with dendrochronological dates and inclusion in site and regional chronologies that contained previously determined radiocarbon dates on other materials. Notably, the compound-specific dates from each of the C16:0 and C18:0 fatty acids in pottery vessels provide an internal quality control of the results6 and are entirely compatible with dates for other commonly dated materials. Accurate radiocarbon dating of pottery vessels can reveal: (1) the period of use of pottery; (2) the antiquity of organic residues, including when specific foodstuffs were exploited; (3) the chronology of sites in the absence of traditionally datable materials; and (4) direct verification of pottery typochronologies. Here we used the method to date the exploitation of dairy and carcass products in Neolithic vessels from Britain, Anatolia, central and western Europe, and Saharan Africa.
Keywords : Archaeology Environmental social sciences
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Journal articles
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https://hal-inrap.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-03227835
Contributor : Carine Carpentier <>
Submitted on : Monday, May 17, 2021 - 4:17:12 PM
Last modification on : Tuesday, May 18, 2021 - 3:31:13 AM

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INRAP | ARTEHIS | MSH-MONDES | UNIV-BOURGOGNE | UNIV-PARIS1 | MAE | CNRS | SITE-ALSACE | UMR8215

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Emmanuelle Casanova, Timothy D. J. Knowles, Alex Bayliss, Julie Dunne, Marek Z. Barański, et al.. Accurate compound-specific 14C dating of archaeological pottery vessels. Nature, 2020, 580, pp.506-510. ⟨10.1038/s41586-020-2178-z⟩. ⟨hal-03227835⟩

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