Prof Christopher Ramsey

Abstract:

AbstractObjectivesSan Juan ante Portam Latinam is one of a small number of European Neolithic sites meeting many of the archaeological criteria expected for a mass grave, and furthermore presents evidence for violent conflict. This study aims to differentiate between what is potentially a single episode of deposition, versus deposition over some centuries, or, alternatively, that resulting from a combination of catastrophic and attritional mortality. The criteria developed are intended to have wider applicability to other such proposed events.Material and MethodsTen new AMS 14C determinations on human bone from the site, together with previously available dates, are analyzed through Bayesian modeling to refine the site's chronology. This is used together with the population's demographic profile as the basis for agent‐based demographic modeling.ResultsThe new radiocarbon results, while improving the site's chronology, fail to resolve the question whether the burial represents a single event, or deposition over decades or centuries—primarily because the dates fall within the late fourth millennium BC plateau in the calibration curve. The demographic modeling indicates that the population's age and sex distribution fits neither a single catastrophic event nor a fully attritional mortality profile, but instead may partake of elements of both.DiscussionIt is proposed that San Juan ante Portam Latinam was used as burial place for the mainly adolescent and adult male dead of a particular or multiple violent engagements (e.g., battles), while previously or subsequently seeing use for attritional burial by other members of one or more surrounding communities dead over the course of a few generations. The overall bias towards males, particularly to the extent that many may represent conflict mortality, has implications for the structure of the surviving community, the members of which may have experienced increased vulnerability in the face of neighboring aggressors.

Abstract:

Considerable work has gone into developing high-precision radiocarbon (14C) chronologies for the southern Levant region during the Late Bronze to Iron Age/early Biblical periods (~1200-600 BC), but there has been little consideration whether the current standard Northern Hemisphere 14C calibration curve (IntCal13) is appropriate for this region. We measured 14C ages of calendar-dated tree-rings from AD1610 to 1940 from southern Jordan to investigate contemporary 14C levels and to compare these with IntCal13. Our data reveal an average offset of ~19 14C years, but more interestingly this offset seems to vary in importance through time. While relatively small, such an offset has substantial relevance to high-resolution 14C chronologies for the southern Levant – both archaeological and paleoenvironmental. For example, reconsidering two published studies, we find differences on average of 60% between the 95.4% probability ranges determined from IntCal13 versus those approximately allowing for the observed offset pattern. Such differences affect, and even potentially undermine, several current archaeological and historical positions and controversies.

Abstract:

This is the thirty‐sixth list of AMS radiocarbon determinations measured at the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit (ORAU). Amongst some of the sites included here are the latest series of determinations from the key sites of El Mirón (Spain) and Sutton Courtney (UK), as well as others dating to the Palaeolithic, Mesolithic and later periods. Submitters of the material provide comments on the significance of the results.