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Radiocarbon dating and the expansion of farming culture from the Near East over Europe

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 May 2014

J. G. D. Clark
J. G. D. Clark
Affiliation:
Department of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge, England
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Extract

The pursuit of radiocarbon dating is one of those elegant exercises in pure science that is fully justified as an end in itself and has justly brought world renown to its inventor. The purpose of this communication is merely to examine one of its many applications, namely the light it has thrown on the westward spread of farming from the ecologically focal regions of south-west Asia to Europe and north Africa. Because of its impact on the evolving ecosystem the spread of farming is of special concern to botanists. Even more so is it a preoccupation of students of man, since it symbolizes a transformation of human society of which the effects are still being felt. The evidence for this phenomenon itself falls into two broad and partly overlapping categories: first there is the indirect evidence afforded by plant ‘indicators’, notably fossil pollen, and second, the direct evidence gained through the investigation of materials from the actual settlements of the prehistoric cultivators themselves.

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society , Volume 31 , December 1965 , pp. 58 - 73
Copyright
Copyright © The Prehistoric Society 1965

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References

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page 72 note 1 The status of Ehenside Tarn is unsatisfactory in the first place because the finds were made nearly a hundred years ago (1869–71) under conditions which make it impossible to attribute any single wooden specimen at present surviving to the neolithic occupation (for the account, see Archaeologia, XLIV, pp. 273–92Google Scholar). It is also unsatisfactory because the original determination made by the Chicago laboratory from a piece of charred wood from the site preserved in the British Museum (C 462. 3010 B.C. ± 300) was released at a time (1952) when a very short chronology was commonly accepted in archaeological circles: if it had been released today it would have been accepted as dead on target. W. F. Libby (Radiocarbon Dating) merely noted ‘Conventional dating is 4,000 years old’, but H. Godwin was more explicit in stating that the ‘C14 assay is perhaps 1,000 years too great’ (Am. J. Science, vol. 249 (1951), p. 305Google Scholar); later (Radiocarbon Supplement, no. 2, p. 70) Godwin noted: ‘wood of very uncertain provenance (fide S. Piggott)’. This last comment is of course correct, but as has been pointed out there was no certainty about the provenance of any single piece of wood from the original investigation. Because of the unsatisfactory position an attempt was made by D. Walker to locate the site of the original finds. Whatever other result was obtained it seems clear from the lack of diagnostic archaeological material that this was not achieved; accordingly the radiocarbon dates (Q 303. 2101 and 2175 ± 115 B.C.) obtained from a stake collected by Walker are hardly relevant. A third assay was made by the British Museum laboratory, this time from wood from an implement collected by the original discoverer; the great disparity in the BM 68 determination (1570 B.C. ± 150) and the fact that it is younger than any known occurrence of Neolithic Plain Ware might be explained by supposing that the sample came from a higher level; alternatively, the difference could be explained by the fact that, as the original account states (p. 287), the wooden implements from the site were treated with alum, something which would probably not have been considered necessary for the charred wood used for the Chicago experiment. Of the two determinations of samples from the original collection, the earlier one is thus (pace Piggott, , PPS, XXVIII, p. 234Google Scholar) to be preferred, more especially as it fits the pattern since revealed by radiocarbon dating in different parts of the British Isles.

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