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Radiocarbon Wiggle-Matching of Japanese Historical Materials with a Possible Systematic Age Offset

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2016

Mineo Imamura,
Hiromasa Ozaki,
Takumi Mitsutani,
Etsuko Niu and
Shigeru Itoh
Mineo Imamura*
Affiliation:
National Museum of Japanese History, The National Institute for Humanities, 117 Jonai-cho, Sakura-shi, Chiba 285-8502, Japan
Hiromasa Ozaki
Affiliation:
National Museum of Japanese History, The National Institute for Humanities, 117 Jonai-cho, Sakura-shi, Chiba 285-8502, Japan
Takumi Mitsutani
Affiliation:
National Research Institute for Cultural Properties, Nara, 2-9-1 Nijo-cho, Nara-shi, Nara 630-8577, Japan
Etsuko Niu
Affiliation:
Paleo-Labo Co. Ltd., 1900-65 Shimotazawa, Kurohone-cho, Kiryu-shi, Gunma 376-0144, Japan
Shigeru Itoh
Affiliation:
Paleo-Labo Co. Ltd., 1900-65 Shimotazawa, Kurohone-cho, Kiryu-shi, Gunma 376-0144, Japan
*
Corresponding author. Email: imamura@rekihaku.ac.jp
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Abstract

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Progress in radiocarbon accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) techniques enables much more access to wiggle-matching techniques for high-precision 14C dating with relatively low costs than before. Recently, we have applied wiggle-matching for a number of wood samples where dendrochronology is difficult because of various limitations imposed for dendro-dating. In most cases, wiggle-matching gave rather unambiguous calendar ages, but we found that in some cases the calibrated date was very sensitive to a systematic error of the 14C date. Here, we present a wooden artifact from the Ujishigai archaeological site as a case where the highest wiggle-matched date did not agree with the date given by dendrochronology. An age with lower probability agreed with the tree-ring age of AD 389, which marked the beginning of the production of Sue ware (unglazed stoneware) in Japan. We show that systematic errors must be carefully taken into account while interpreting 14C wiggle-matching results, whether they are due to instrumental errors (statistical) or due to a regional offset from the IntCal04 (Reimer et al. 2004) calibration curve.

Information

Type
Articles
Information
Radiocarbon , Volume 49 , Issue 2 , 2007, pp. 331 - 337
Copyright
Copyright © 2007 by the Arizona Board of Regents on behalf of the University of Arizona 

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