Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-4rdpn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T02:28:12.276Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Marine Radiocarbon Reservoir Effect in Tomales Bay, California

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 March 2018

Lee M Panich ,
Tsim D Schneider  and
Paul Engel
Lee M Panich*
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, Santa Clara University, 500 El Camino Real, Santa Clara, California 95053USA
Tsim D Schneider
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, University of California, Santa Cruz, 1156 High StreetSanta Cruz, California 95064USA
Paul Engel
Affiliation:
Point Reyes National Seashore, 1 Bear Valley Road, Point Reyes Station, California 94956USA
*
*Corresponding author. Email: lpanich@scu.edu.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper examines the marine reservoir effect for Tomales Bay, a 25.5-km-long tidal estuary along the northern coast of California. We determined the regional ∆R through radiocarbon (14C) measurements of pre-1950 shells from a museum collection as well as archaeologically recovered shell samples from a historical railroad grade of known construction date. These results are compared against four sets of paired shell and bone samples from two local archaeological sites. Our results indicate little spatial variation along the inner bay, but the proposed ∆R value is lower than those previously reported for nearby areas along the Pacific Coast. We also note potential variability in regional ∆R of approximately 200 14C years for the late Holocene, and comparison with an older paired bone and shell sample points toward more significant temporal variation earlier in time.

Keywords

Californiacoastalmarine radiocarbon reservoir effectradiocarbonTomales Bay
Type
Research Article
Information
Radiocarbon , Volume 60 , Issue 3 , June 2018 , pp. 963 - 974
Copyright
© 2018 by the Arizona Board of Regents on behalf of the University of Arizona 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Abatzoglou, JT, Redmond, KT, Edwards, LM. 2009. Classification of Regional Climate Variability in the State of California.138. Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology 48:1527–1541.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Apodaca, AJ. 2017. Selective harvesting of pacific gaper clams (Tresus Nuttallii): an eco-archaeological study of indigenous clam bed management at Colonial Period Toms Point (CA-MRN-202), Tomales Bay, California [honor’s thesis]. Department of Anthropology, University of California, Santa Cruz.Google Scholar
Ascough, P, Cook, GT, Dugmore, AJ. 2005. Methodological approaches to determining the marine radiocarbon reservoir effect. Progress in Physical Geography 29(4):532–547.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Avery, C. 2009. Tomales Bay Environmental History and Historic Resource Study, Point Reyes National Seashore. U.S. Department of the Interior National Park Service, Pacific West Region. San Francisco.Google Scholar
Beardsley, RK. 1954. Temporal and areal relationships in central California archaeology. Reports of the University of California Archaeological Survey, 24. University of California, Berkeley.Google Scholar
Bevington, PR. 1969. Data Reduction and Error Analytics for the Physical Sciences. New York: McGraw Hill.Google Scholar
Dettman, DL, Mitchell, DR, Huckleberry, G, Foster, MS. 2015. 14C and marine reservoir effect in archaeological samples from the northeast Gulf of California. Radiocarbon 57(5):785–793.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dickinson, AB. 1967. Narrow Gauge to the Redwoods: The Story of the North Pacific Coast Railroad and San Francisco Bay Paddle-wheel Ferries. Los Angeles: Trans-Anglo Books.Google Scholar
DirectAMS Radiocarbon Dating Service. 2018. Process. www.directams.com, accessed 2018-02-06.Google Scholar
Fischer, DT, Smith, SV, Churchill, RR. 1996. Simulation of a century of runoff across the Tomales watershed, Marin County, California. Journal of Hydrology 186:253–273.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Foster, GM. 1960. Edward Winslow Gifford, 1887–1959. American Anthropologist 62(2):327–329.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gifford, EW. 1947. California Shell Artifacts, Anthropological Records 9:1. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Goodfriend, GA, Flessa, KW. 1997. Radiocarbon reservoir ages in the Gulf of California: roles of upwelling and flow from the Colorado River. Radiocarbon 39(2):139–148.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grove, K, Niemi, TM. 1999. The San Andreas fault zone near Point Reyes: Late Quaternary deposition, deformation, and paleoseismology. In: Wagner DL, Graham SA, editors. Geologic Field Trips in Northern California: California Geological Survey Special Publication 119. p 176–187.Google Scholar
Hearn, CJ, Largier, JL. 1997. The summer buoyancy dynamics of a shallow Mediterranean estuary and some effects of changing bathymetry: Tomales Bay, California. Estuarine, Coastal, and Shelf Science 45:497–506.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hollibaugh, JT, Cole, BE, Dollar, SJ, Hager, SW, Vink, SM, Kimmerer, WJ, Obrebski, S, Smith, SV, Valentino, M, Walsh, TW. 1988. Tomales Bay, California: a macrocosm for examining biogeochemical coupling at the land-sea interface. Eos 69(36):843–845.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ingram, BL. 1998. Differences in radiocarbon age between shell and charcoal from a Holocene shellmound in northern California. Quaternary Research 49:102–110.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ingram, BL, Southon, JR. 1996. Reservoir ages in eastern Pacific coastal and estuarine waters. Radiocarbon 38(3):573–582.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Longin, R. 1971. New method of collagen extraction for radiocarbon dating. Nature 230:241–242.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
MacGregor, B. 2003. The Birth of California Narrow Gauge: A Regional Study of the Technology of Thomas and Martin Carter. Stanford (CA): Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Panich, LM, Schneider, TD, Byram, RS. 2018. Finding mid-19th century native settlements: cartographic and archaeological evidence from central California. Journal of Field Archaeology 43(2):152–165.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reimer, RW, Reimer, PJ. 2016. An online application for ΔR calculation. Radiocarbon 59(5):1623–1627.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Robinson, SW, Thompson, G. 1981. Radiocarbon corrections for marine shell dates with application to southern Pacific Northwest Coast prehistory. Syesis 14:45–57.Google Scholar
Russell, N, Cook, GT, Ascough, PL, Scott, EM, Dugmore, AJ. 2011. Examining the inherent variability in ΔR: new methods of presenting ΔR values and implications for MRE studies. Radiocarbon 53(2):277–288.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schneider, TD. 2018. Making and unmaking native communities in mission and post-mission era Marin County, California. In: Hull KL, Douglas JG, editors. Forging Communities in Colonial Alta California. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Manuscript in press.Google Scholar
Stewart, S, Praetzellis, A. editors. 2003. Archaeological Research Issues for the Point Reyes National Seashore – Golden Gate National Recreation Area. San Francisco: National Park Service.Google Scholar
Stuiver, M, Braziunas, TF. 1993. Modeling atmospheric 14C influences and 14C ages of marine samples to 10,000 BC. Radiocarbon 35(1):137–189.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stuiver, M, Reimer, PJ, Reimer, RW. 2017. CALIB 7.1 [WWW program] at http://calib.org, accessed 2017-10-02.Google Scholar
Taylor, RE, Southon, J, Des Lauriers, MR. 2007. Holocene marine reservoir time series ΔR values from Cedros Island, Baja California. Radiocarbon 49(2):899–904.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taylor, RE, Bar-Yosef, O. 2014. Radiocarbon Dating: An Archaeological Perspective. Walnut Creek (CA): Left Coast Press, Inc.Google Scholar
Western Regional Climate Center. 2017. California Climate Tracker [WWW program] at https://wrcc.dri.edu/monitor/cal-mon/index.html, accessed 2017-11-01.Google Scholar