Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand abstracts

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Differential reliability of ¹⁴C AMS ages of Rattus exulans bone gelatin in south Pacific prehistory

Atholl Anderson*

*Department of Archaeology and Natural History, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Institute of Advanced Studies, Australian National University, Canberra ACT 0200, Australia

Analysis of assemblages of AMS radiocarbon determinations of Rattus exulans bone gelatin samples collected in the south Pacific (New Zealand and Norfolk Island) shows that results from both archaeological and natural sites have an inverse correlation of radiocarbon age with sequence of processing, particularly in IGNS data. Consideration of potential causes of this variation, including differential dietary effects and sample degradation, provides no general explanation. It is hypothesized that laboratory processing of rat bone samples improved with experience. Taken into account, this proposition brings rat bone gelatin radiocarbon ages into line with prevailing archaeological and palaeoenvironmental opinion about ages of human colonisation and the concurrent introduction of Rattus exulans to the southern islands of Polynesia about 800 B.P. Problems remain in the radiocarbon dating of rat bone, however, and the reliability of determinations is currently uncertain.

Keywords  ¹⁴C AMS dates; Rattus exulans; natural sites; archaeological sites; Polynesian colonisation; New Zealand; Norfolk Island

(c) Journal of The Royal Society of New Zealand,

Volume 30, Number 3, September 2000, pp 243-261

PDF file of entire paper: medium quality (1236K); (scanned from paper original: notes about this process)

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