Output details

IntCal09 and Marine09 Radiocarbon Age Calibration Curves, 0-50,000 Years cal BP

The 14C dating calibration curves presented in Reimer et al., 2009 were the first internationally-agreed curves to be estimated using Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) simulation-based, Bayesian statistical methodology (an approach pioneered and led by Caitlin Buck, at Sheffield) thus allowing inference on the basis of data sources in addition to the well established use of tree-ring data. To derive these curves, Paula Reimer and her team (at Queen's University Belfast) liaised with a large number of potential data providers in order to collate candidate calibration data from long palaeoenvironmental records generated by researchers around the world and undertook the associated quality control and data management. Buck and her Sheffield team documented the data structures present in the resulting records, developed tailored statistical models to represent those structures and then implemented the necessary MCMC simulation-based, Bayesian statistical methodology to estimate the underlying calibration curves. The resulting statistical models and methods are documented in a companion paper (Heaton, Blackwell & Buck, 2009); (Heaton was the RA employed by Buck on an NERC grant), whereas the resulting fitted curves that provide the current (to 2013) standard 14C dating method are presented for the first time in Reimer et al., 2009 (the current paper). These new curves are the first to extend over the full range of the radiocarbon dating method, i.e. back to 50,000 cal BP; the 2004 curves had extended only to 26,000 cal BP. Thus, 2009 was the first time that radiocarbon dates from Palaeolithic artefacts and those from many late-Pleistocene palaeoenvironmental records, could be calibrated and thus interpreted on an absolute time scale, as a result of the advances in curve fitting for radiocarbon calibrations developed by Buck’s team.