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1. UPDATING THE CLASSIC NEW YORK LAMOKA LAKE AND SCACCIA SITES: REFINED CHRONOLOGIES THROUGH AMS DATING AND BAYESIAN MODELING

   https://doi.org/10.1017/RDC.2023.37  

   Hart, John P; Birch, Jennifer; Manning, Sturt W; Lorentzen, Brita (June 2023, Radiocarbon)

   ABSTRACT The Lamoka Lake and Scaccia sites in present-day New York have played important roles in the development of archaeology in New York, and in the case of Lamoka Lake, in eastern North America. Lamoka Lake is the type site for the “Archaic” period in eastern North American culture history and the “Late Archaic” “Lamoka phase” in New York culture history. The Scaccia site is the largest “Early Woodland” “Meadowood phase” site in New York and has the earliest evidence for pottery and agriculture crop use in the state. Lamoka Lake has been dated to 2500 BC based on a series of solid carbon and gas-proportional counting radiometric dates on bulk wood charcoal obtained in the 1950s and 1960s. Scaccia has been dated to 870 BC based on a single uncalibrated radiometric date obtained on bulk charcoal in the early 1970s. As a result, the ages of these important sites need to be refined. New AMS dates and Bayesian analyses presented here place Lamoka Lake at 2962–2902 BC (68.3% highest posterior density [hpd])) and Scaccia at 1049–838 BC (68.3% hpd). 

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2. New radiocarbon dates reveal pan-Holocene deposition of rodents at Trouing Jérémie #5, a sinkhole in the western Tiburon Peninsula, Haiti

   https://doi.org/10.1177/09596836221101279  

   Cooke, Siobhán Bríghid; Erin Crowley, Brooke (June 2022, The Holocene)

   We present eight new radiocarbon dates for endemic and invasive rodents from Trouing Jérémie #5, a paleontologically-rich sink hole on the Tiburon Peninsula, Haiti. This includes new dates for two species that have been previously directly dated ( Isolobodon portoricensis and Brotomys voratus) as well as three endemic rodents which have no previous direct radiometric dates ( Plagiodontia velozi, Hexolobodon phenax, and Rhizoplagiodontia lemkei). The radiocarbon date for P. velozi, the largest of these species, is from the very early Holocene (10,995 ± 190 calendar years before present; Cal BP). Specimens of medium-bodied species, H. phenax and R. lemkei date to the mid-Holocene, while specimens of smaller-bodied I. portoricencis and B. voratus have dates falling in the Late-Holocene. These dates confirm that several of the extinct rodent species coexisted with the first humans, who arrived on the island ca. 6000 years ago. In contrast, murid Rattus specimens date to the last few centuries. Rats arrived with Europeans in the late 15th or early 16th Century and a radiocarbon date of ca. 500 Cal BP for one individual suggests that they likely spread quickly across the island. Collectively, these dates establish that vertebrate accumulations at Trouing Jérémie #5 span the Holocene. Remains from this site may provide a useful time sequence for future work examining ecological change across the Holocene as well as regional extirpation patterns. 

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3. Spatial and Temporal Variation in Paralytic Shellfish Toxin Production by Benthic Microseira (Lyngbya) wollei in a Freshwater New York Lake

   https://doi.org/10.3390/toxins11010044  

   Smith, Zacharias; Martin, Robbie; Wei, Bofan; Wilhelm, Steven; Boyer, Gregory (January 2019, Toxins)

   Butterfield Lake is a mesotrophic lake in New York State where residents and pets have experienced unexplained health issues. Microseira wollei (basionym Lyngbya wollei) was found at two of 15 sites in Butterfield Lake and analyzed for microcystins, anatoxins, cylindrospermopsins, and paralytic shellfish poisoning toxins (PSTs). Only PSTs and trace levels of anatoxin-a were detected in these samples. This is the first published report of PSTs within a New York State lake. To evaluate the environmental and temporal drivers leading to the observed toxicity, PST content at the two sites was examined in detail. There were distinct differences in the total PST content, filament nutrient, filament chlorophyll, and relationship to environmental drivers between the sites, as well as distinct differences in the total PST content measured using different analytical techniques. A multivariate model containing site, temperature, and filament chlorophyll explained 85% of the variation in PSTs observed over the growing season. This work emphasizes the importance of proper site selection and choice of analytical technique in the development of monitoring programs to protect lake users from the occurrence of benthic cyanobacteria toxins. 

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4. Do counts of radiocarbon-dated archaeological sites reflect human population density? A preliminary empirical validation examining spatial variation across late Holocene California

   https://doi.org/10.1017/RDC.2024.81  

   Codding, Brian F; Meyer, Jack; Brewer, Simon C; Kelly, Robert L; Jones, Terry L (September 2024, Radiocarbon)

   Researchers increasingly rely on aggregations of radiocarbon dates from archaeological sites as proxies for past human populations. This approach has been critiqued on several grounds, including the assumptions that material is deposited, preserved, and sampled in proportion to past population size. However, various attempts to quantitatively assess the approach suggest there may be some validity in assuming date counts reflect relative population size. To add to this conversation, here we conduct a preliminary analysis coupling estimates of ethnographic population density with late Holocene radiocarbon dates across all counties in California. Results show that counts of late Holocene radiocarbon-dated archaeological sites increase significantly as a function of ethnographic population density. This trend is robust across varying sampling windows over the last 5000 BP. Though the majority of variation in dated-site counts remains unexplained by population density. Outliers reveal how departures from the central trend may be influenced by regional differences in research traditions, development-driven contract work, organic preservation, and landscape taphonomy. Overall, this exercise provides some support for the “dates-as-data” approach and offers insights into the conditions where the underlying assumptions may or may not hold. 

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5. New Bayesian radiocarbon models for Early Bronze IV Tell Abu en-Ni‘aj and Middle Bronze Age Tell el-Hayyat, Jordan.

   https://doi.org/10.1017/RDC.2020.104  

   Fall, P.L.; Falconer, S.E; Höflmayer, F. (February 2021, Radiocarbon)

   Jull, A.J.T. (Ed.)

   ABSTRACT. We present two new Bayesian 14C models using IntCal20 that incorporate 17 new calibrated AMS ages for Early Bronze IV Tell Abu en-Ni‘aj and Middle Bronze Age Tell el-Hayyat, located in the northern Jordan Valley, Jordan. These freshly augmented suites of carbonized seed dates now include 25 AMS dates from Tell Abu en-Ni‘aj and 31 AMS dates from Tell el-Hayyat. The modeled founding date for Tell Abu en-Ni‘aj strengthens an emerging high chronology for Early Bronze IV starting by 2500 cal BC, while the end of its habitation by 2200 cal BC may exemplify a regional pattern of increasingly pervasive abandonment among late Early Bronze IV settlements in the Southern Levant. In turn, our modeled date for the Early Bronze IV/Middle Bronze Age transition at Tell el-Hayyat around 1900 cal BC pushes this interface about a century later than surmised traditionally, and its abandonment in Middle Bronze III marks an unexpectedly early end date before 1600 cal BC. These inferences, which coordinate Bayesian AMS models and typological ceramic sequences for Tell Abu en-Ni‘aj and Tell el-Hayyat, contribute to an ongoing revision of Early and Middle Bronze Age Levantine chronologies and uncoupling of their attendant interpretive links between the Southern Levant and Egypt. 

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