Working with Radiocarbon Dates

1971 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 15-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. T. Waterbolk

C-14 datings can not only provide us with estimates of the absolute age of objects or occupation layers, but also, when available in sufficient numbers, with initial and terminal datings for cultural phases, thus defining their duration. The value of this is obvious: differential duration in different areas can at last provide definitive answers to long-disputed questions concerning the direction of cultural movement.Working with large numbers of C-14 dates is, however, not entirely free of problems. We are, for example, regularly confronted with larger differences between datings expected to be of similar age than can be accounted for by mere statistical error (Vogel, 1969a) or which can be explained by contamination or other simple causes. One can stop at this point and accept a limited testimonial value for C-14 dates (e.g. Steuer and Tempel, 1968), or one can try to go further by calculating average dates, assuming (for the most part incorrectly) that the chance of a date being too young is equal to its chance of being too old (Neustupný, 1968). The danger in this procedure is that one loses sight of the individual character of each determination: in fact one sample is much more securely associated and more closely contemporary with finds of a particular cultural phase than another, and the chance of contamination or admixture is different for each sample.Another problem is that the number of C-14 dates that one must take into consideration is often so large that they cannot be digested without some form of graphic presentation, and for this there is as yet no uniformity of practice.

Radiocarbon ◽  
1976 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 355-361 ◽  
Author(s):  
A A Burchuladze ◽  
L D Gedevanishvili ◽  
G I Togonidze

The Radiocarbon Laboratory under the Chair of Nuclear physics of Tbilisi State University is engaged in studies of radiocarbon variation in the atmosphere and mineral waters and determination of the absolute age of archaeologic, geologic, botanical, and other samples. This list reports dates of archaeologic and geologic specimens only. Gas counting and liquid scintillation methods are used for dating.


Iraq ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 80 ◽  
pp. 251-261
Author(s):  
Maciej M. Wencel

This article reports three new radiocarbon dates from the Iraqi sites of Tell Fara (Shuruppak) and Tell Muqayyar (Ur), produced as a part of a larger dating project on the absolute chronology of Southern Mesopotamia from the Uruk period until the Akkadian era. The radiocarbon results presented here offer good absolute time estimates for the ED I/II period at Fara and the most reliable absolute age so far for the important archaeological find that is the earliest graves in the Royal Cemetery of Ur.


2003 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 165-169
Author(s):  
Paul R. J. Duffy ◽  
Olivia Lelong

Summary An archaeological excavation was carried out at Graham Street, Leith, Edinburgh by Glasgow University Archaeological Research Division (GUARD) as part of the Historic Scotland Human Remains Call-off Contract following the discovery of human remains during machine excavation of a foundation trench for a new housing development. Excavation demonstrated that the burial was that of a young adult male who had been interred in a supine position with his head orientated towards the north. Radiocarbon dates obtained from a right tibia suggest the individual died between the 15th and 17th centuries AD. Little contextual information exists in documentary or cartographic sources to supplement this scant physical evidence. Accordingly, it is difficult to further refine the context of burial, although a possible link with a historically attested siege or a plague cannot be discounted.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 2239
Author(s):  
Marzena Kramarz ◽  
Edyta Przybylska

Multimodal freight transport in cities is a complex, valid, and vitally important problem. It is more seldom underlined in scientific studies and included in cities’ strategies that devote more attention to passenger transport than freight transport. The increased utilization of multimodal transport matches current transport policy and at the same time, it is one of the most important challenges put before cities striving to achieve sustainable development. In this case, the paper embarks upon the problem of relations between multimodal transport development and the sustainable development of the cities. The objective of the paper is an analysis of the impact of the selected city of the Upper Silesian metropolis on the development of multimodal freight transport and an assessment of the impact of the development of multimodal transport on the sustainable development of the cities of the Upper Silesian metropolis. The authors developed three research questions in order to implement the adopted objective. The process of looking for the answer included four stages. Within the first and second stages, the literature studies and experts’ research allowed for identifying key factors of the multimodal transport development that a city may have an impact on. In the third stage, the research was two-fold and was based on a questionnaire and scenario analysis. Due to the individual character of each of the cities, scenarios were developed for Katowice, being the main economic center of Upper Silesian and Zagłębie Metropolis. As a result of the research, factors have been identified that must be included in a strategy of a city that strives for sustainable development. The last stage of the research focused on the initial concept of the multimodal transport development impact assessment on sustainable development of the cities. Conclusions developed at individual stages allowed for answering the research questions.


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sergi Trias-Llimós ◽  
Lisa Pennells ◽  
Aage Tverdal ◽  
Alexander V. Kudryavtsev ◽  
Sofia Malyutina ◽  
...  

AbstractSurprisingly few attempts have been made to quantify the simultaneous contribution of well-established risk factors to CVD mortality differences between countries. We aimed to develop and critically appraise an approach to doing so, applying it to the substantial CVD mortality gap between Russia and Norway using survey data in three cities and mortality risks from the Emerging Risk Factor Collaboration. We estimated the absolute and relative differences in CVD mortality at ages 40–69 years between countries attributable to the risk factors, under the counterfactual that the age- and sex-specific risk factor profile in Russia was as in Norway, and vice-versa. Under the counterfactual that Russia had the Norwegian risk factor profile, the absolute age-standardized CVD mortality gap would decline by 33.3% (95% CI 25.1–40.1) among men and 22.1% (10.4–31.3) among women. In relative terms, the mortality rate ratio (Russia/Norway) would decline from 9–10 to 7–8. Under the counterfactual that Norway had the Russian risk factor profile, the mortality gap reduced less. Well-established CVD risk factors account for a third of the male and around a quarter of the female CVD mortality gap between Russia and Norway. However, these estimates are based on widely held epidemiological assumptions that deserve further scrutiny.


2013 ◽  
Vol 300-301 ◽  
pp. 874-881
Author(s):  
Chuan Rong Zhao ◽  
De Ren Kong ◽  
Fang Wang ◽  
Li Xia Yang ◽  
Li Ping Li

This article introduces the function, the method of selection and related criterion of standard internal crusher gauge, and systematically analyzes three factors that affect the measuring uncertainty of standard internal crusher gauge, including: inconsistency of pressure’s true value from pressure source, the uncertainty imported by standard copper-cylinder and the random fluctuations of the individual character of pressure measuring gauge. According to usage characteristics and selection methods of the standard internal crusher gauge, discusses computing methods of components of the measuring uncertainty and establishes evaluation model for measuring uncertainty of standard internal crusher gauge. The model can quantitatively calculate through experimental data of selection, which lay a theoretical foundation for the control of the pressure measuring uncertainty of standard internal crusher gauge.


Development ◽  
1994 ◽  
Vol 120 (4) ◽  
pp. 853-859 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Leptin ◽  
S. Roth

The mesoderm in Drosophila invaginates by a series of characteristic cell shape changes. Mosaics of wild-type cells in an environment of mutant cells incapable of making mesodermal invaginations show that this morphogenetic behaviour does not require interactions between large numbers of cells but that small patches of cells can invaginate independent of their neighbours' behaviour. While the initiation of cell shape change is locally autonomous, the shapes the cells assume are partly determined by the individual cell's environment. Cytoplasmic transplantation experiments show that areas of cells expressing mesodermal genes ectopically at any position in the egg form an invagination. We propose that ventral furrow formation is the consequence of all prospective mesodermal cells independently following their developmental program. Gene expression at the border of the mesoderm is induced by the apposition of mesodermal and non-mesodermal cells.


2013 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-88 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy Mitchener-Nissen

When assessing any security technology which impacts upon privacy, whether this constitutes a new technology or the novel application of existing technologies, we should do so by examining the combined effect of all security interventions currently employed within a society. This contrasts with the prevailing system whereby the impact of a new security technology is predominantly assessed on an individual basis by a subjective balancing of the security benefits of that technology against any reductions in concomitant rights, such as privacy and liberty. I contend that by continuing to focus on the individual effect, as opposed to the combined effects, of security technologies within a society the likelihood of sleep-walking into (or indeed waking-up in) an absolute surveillance society moves from a possible future to the logically inevitable future. This conclusion is based on two underlying assertions. Firstly that assessing a technology often entails a judgement of whether any loss in privacy is legitimised by a justifiable increase in security; however one fundamental difference between these two rights is that privacy is a finite resource with identifiable end-states (i.e. absolute privacy through to the absolute absence of privacy) whereas security does not have two finite end-states (while there exists the absolute absence of security, absolute security is an unobtainable yet desired goal). The second assertion, which relies upon the validity of the first, holds that one consequence of absolute security being unobtainable yet desirable is that new security interventions will continuously be developed, each potentially trading a small measure of privacy for a small rise in security. Examined individually each intervention may constitute a justifiable trade-off. However this approach of combining interventions in the search for ever greater security will ultimately reduce privacy to zero.


Author(s):  
J. Randolph ◽  
J. Plescia ◽  
Y. Bar-Cohen ◽  
P. Bartlett ◽  
D. Bickler ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  

1994 ◽  
Vol 346 (1317) ◽  
pp. 333-343 ◽  

High mutation rates are generally considered to be detrimental to the fitness of multicellular organisms because mutations untune finely tuned biological machinery. However, high mutation rates may be favoured by a need to evade an immune system that has been strongly stimulated to recognize those variants that reproduced earlier during the infection, hiv infections conform to this situation because they are characterized by large numbers of viruses that are continually breaking latency and large numbers that are actively replicating throughout a long period of infection. To be transmitted, HIVS are thus generally exposed to an immune system that has been activated to destroy them in response to prior viral replication in the individual. Increases in sexual contact should contribute to this predicament by favouring evolution toward relatively high rates of replication early during infection. Because rapid replication and high mutation rate probably contribute to rapid progression of infections to aids, the interplay of sexual activity, replication rate, and mutation rate helps explain why HIV-1 has only recently caused a lethal pandemic, even though molecular data suggest that it may have been present in humans for more than a century. This interplay also offers an explanation for geographic differences in progression to cancer found among infections due to the other major group of human retroviruses, human T-cell lymphotropic viruses (HTLV). Finally, it suggests ways in which we can use natural selection as a tool to control the aids pandemic and prevent similar pandemics from arising in the future.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document