Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand abstracts

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Dating of Rattus exulans and bird bone from Pleasant River (Otago, New Zealand): radiocarbon anomalies from diet

Nancy Beavan-Athfield^*, Rodger J. Sparks

^*Rafter Radiocarbon Laboratory, Institute of Geological and Nuclear Sciences, Box 31 312, Lower Hutt, New Zealand. email: n.beavan@gns.cri.nz

Radiocarbon ages of Rattus exulans bone recovered from the Pleasant River, Otago, archaeological site were originally rejected on the basis of ¹⁴C variability allegedly caused by laboratory processing. Subsequent work revealed no burial contaminant that could have affected the results on bone protein as processed. We present the analysis of bone from seven bird species at the Pleasant River site, which showed that marshland fowl also had up to 300 yr radiocarbon variation in their ages, but maintained terrestrial-range δ¹³C and δ¹⁵N values. The apparent dietary effect that offsets marshland fowl ¹⁴C ages at Pleasant River suggested there was a similar, diet-based cause for the anomalous radiocarbon ages for some R. exulans at the site, rather than a laboratory contamination or processing effect.

Keywords  radiocarbon; bone; diet; stable isotopes; Rattus exulans; Coturnix novaezelandiae; Cyanoramphus sp.; Anas rhynchotis; Anas superciliosa; Anas chlorotis; Megadyptes antipodes; Stictocarbo punctatus

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

Volume 31, Number 4, December 2001, pp 801-809

PDF file of entire paper: medium quality (596K); (scanned from paper original: notes about this process)

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