Radiocarbon wiggle matching on laminated sediments delivers high-precision chronologies

Rey, Fabian; Gobet, Erika; Szidat, Sönke; Lotter, André Franz; Gilli, Adrian; Hafner, Albert; Tinner, Willy (2019). Radiocarbon wiggle matching on laminated sediments delivers high-precision chronologies. Radiocarbon, 61(1), pp. 265-285. Arizona Board of Regents, University of Arizona 10.1017/RDC.2018.47

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High-resolution sediment chronologies with the best possible time control are essential for comparing palaeoecological studies with independent high-precision climatic, archaeological or historic data in order to disentangle causes and effects of past environmental, ecological and societal change. We present two varved lake sediment sequences from Moossee and Burgäschisee (Swiss Plateau) that have chronologies developed with Bayesian models and radiocarbon (14C) dating of terrestrial plant macrofossils extracted from sediment samples with constant age ranges. We illustrate the potential of high-resolution 14C dating for the construction of robust, high-precision sediment chronologies. The mean 2σ age uncertainties were reduced to±19 cal yr for Moossee and to±54 cal yr for Burgäschisee over the entire period of 3000 cal yr, while 2σ uncertainties of only±13 cal yr and±18 cal yr respectively, were achieved for shorter time intervals. These precisions are better than or comparable to those of previous varve studies. Our results imply that a sophisticated subsampling strategy and a careful selection of short-lived and well-defined terrestrial plant remains are crucial to avoid outlying 14C ages. A direct linkage between palaeoeological studies with dendrochronologically dated, local archaeological sites as well as a precise comparison with high-

Item Type:

Journal Article (Original Article)

Division/Institute:

10 Strategic Research Centers > Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research (OCCR)
08 Faculty of Science > Department of Chemistry, Biochemistry and Pharmaceutical Sciences (DCBP)
08 Faculty of Science > Department of Biology > Institute of Plant Sciences (IPS) > Palaeoecology
06 Faculty of Humanities > Department of History and Archaeology > Institute of Archaeological Sciences > Pre- and Early History
08 Faculty of Science > Department of Biology > Institute of Plant Sciences (IPS)

UniBE Contributor:

Rey, Fabian, Gobet, Erika, Szidat, Sönke, Lotter, André Franz, Hafner, Albert, Tinner, Willy

Subjects:

500 Science > 580 Plants (Botany)
900 History > 930 History of ancient world (to ca. 499)
500 Science > 570 Life sciences; biology
500 Science > 540 Chemistry

ISSN:

0033-8222

Publisher:

Arizona Board of Regents, University of Arizona

Language:

English

Submitter:

Peter Alfred von Ballmoos-Haas

Date Deposited:

12 Jun 2018 14:07

Last Modified:

05 Dec 2022 15:14

Publisher DOI:

10.1017/RDC.2018.47

Uncontrolled Keywords:

age-depth modeling, AMS dating, OxCal, V-sequence, varved lake sediments

BORIS DOI:

10.7892/boris.117149

URI:

https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/117149

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