Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter I
2. Contents V
3. Foreword IX
4. Preface XI
5. Participants XIII
6. I. ARCHAEOLOGIC AND GEOLOGIC DATING
7. 1. In Honor of Willard Frank Libby 3
8. 2. Radiocarbon Dating and African Archaeology 7
9. 3. Sea Level Variations and the Birth of the Egyptian Civilization 32
10. 4. An Appeal from the Consumer 37
11. 5. A Radiocarbon Chronology for the Early Postglacial Stone Industries of England and Wales 41
12. 6. New Absolute Dates on Upper Pleistocene Fossil Hominids from America 69
13. 7. Were the Allerød and Two Creeks Substages Contemporaneous? 76
14. 8. A Second Millennium B.C. Radiocarbon Chronology for the Maya Lowlands 83
15. 9. The Effective Use of Radiocarbon Dates in the Seriation of Archaeological Sites 89
16. 10. Climate Controlled Uranium Distribution in Atlantic Ocean Core V29-179 95
17. 11. The Neolithic Chronology of Switzerland by Underwater Archaeological Methods 102
18. II. RADIOCARBON METHODOLOGY
19. 1. Correlation of ¹⁴C activity of NBS Oxalic Acid with Arizona 1850 Wood and ANU Sucrose Standards 115
20. 2. An Improved Procedure for Wet Oxidation of the ¹⁴C NBS Oxalic Acid Standard 125
21. 3. The Importance of the Pretreatment of Wood and Charcoal Samples 135
22. 4. Recent Progress in Low Level Counting and other Isotope Detection Methods 147
23. 5. Measurement of Small Radiocarbon Samples: Power of Alternative Methods for Tracing Atmospheric Hydrocarbons 158
24. 6. Further Improvement of Counter Background and Shielding 176
25. 7. The Effect of Electronegative Impurities on CO₂ Proportional Counting: An On-line Purity Test Counter 185
26. 8. Examination of Counting Efficiency during Measurements of Natural ¹⁴C 197
27. 9. ¹⁴C Dating to 60,000 Years B.P. with Proportional Counters 202
28. 10. A Thermal Diffusion Plant for Radiocarbon Isotope Enrichment from Natural Samples 216
29. 11. Possibility of Measurement of ¹⁴C by Mass Spectrometer Techniques 238
30. 12. Specific Problems with Liquid Scintillation Counting of Small Benzene Volumes and Background Count Rate Estimation 246
31. 13. An Assessment of Laboratory Errors in Liquid Scintillation Methods of ¹⁴C Dating 256
32. 14. Radiocarbon Dating at the U. S. Geological Survey, Menlo Park, California 268
33. III. SOIL DATING
34. 1. Soil Fraction Dating 277
35. 2. Radiocarbon Dating of Organic Components of Sediments and Peats 284
36. IV. ARTIFICIAL RADIOCARBON IN NATURE
37. 1. Artificial Radiocarbon in the Stratosphere 309
38. 2. A Survey of Radiocarbon Variation in Nature since the Test Ban Treaty 313
39. 3. The Uptake of Bomb ¹⁴C in Humans 324
40. 4. Further Application of Bomb ¹⁴C as a Biological Tracer 342
41. 5. Radiocarbon Transmutation Mechanism for Spontaneous Somatic Cellular Mutations 355
42. 6. The Origin of Drift-Gas Deposits as Determined by Radiocarbon Dating of Methane 365
43. 7. Fossil Fuel Exhaust-Gas Admixture with the Atmosphere 388
44. V. SHELLS AND WATER PLANTS
45. 1. The use of Marine Shells in Dating Land/Sea Level Changes 397
46. 2. The Suitability of Marine Shells for Radiocarbon Dating of Australian Prehistory 404
47. 3. Fraction Studies on Marine Shell and Bone Samples for Radiocarbon Analyses 422
48. 4. Radiocarbon Activity in Submerged Plants from various South Swedish Lakes 433
49. VI. OCEANOGRAPHY
50. 1. ¹⁴C Activity of Arctic Marine Mammals 447
51. 2. Environmental Effects on Radiocarbon in Coastal Marine Sediments 453
52. 3. ¹⁴C Routine Dating of Marine Sediments 470
53. VII. TREE RINGS AND OTHER KNOWN AGE SAMPLES
54. 1. ¹⁴C in Modern American Trees 495
55. 2. ¹⁴C Content of Nineteenth Century Tree Rings 511
56. 3. Subsurface Radar Probing for Detection of Buried Bristlecone Pine Wood 520
57. 4. Radial Translocation of Carbon in Bristlecone Pine 532
58. 5. The ¹⁴C Level during the Fourth and Second Half of the Fifth Millennium B.C. and the ¹⁴C Calibration Curve 538
59. 6. Composite Computer Plots of ¹⁴C Dates for Tree-Ring-Dated Bristlecone Pines and Sequoias 545
60. 7. Holocene Tree Ring Series from Southern Central Europe for Archaeologic Dating, Radiocarbon Calibration, and Stable Isotope Analysis 554
61. 8. The Contribution of the Swiss Lake-Dwellings to the Calibration of Radiocarbon Dates 566
62. 9. Dendrochronology of Neolithic Settlements in Western Switzerland: New Possibility for Prehistoric Calibration 585
63. 10. Archaeological Evidence for Short-term Natural ¹⁴C Variations 591
64. 11. Radiocarbon Variations determined on Egyptian Samples from Dra Abu El-Naga 601
65. 12. The Radiocarbon Contents of Various Reservoirs 613
66. 13. Evaluation of Total Variability in Radiocarbon Counting 619
67. VIII. MODELING EXPERIMENT
68. 1. Prognosis for the Expected CO₂ Increase due to Fossil Fuel Combustion 633
69. 2. In Situ ¹⁴C Production in Wood 643
70. IX. RADIOCARBON AND CLIMATE
71. 1. Isotopic Tree Thermometers: Anticorrelation with Radiocarbon 661
72. 2. Causal Mechanisms in Climatic and Weather Changes as Revealed from Paleomagnetic Investigations of Samples Dated by the ¹⁴C Method and from Geomagnetic Variations 670
73. 3. Sensitivity of Radiocarbon Fluctuations and Inventory to Geomagnetic and Reservoir Parameters 691
74. X. RADIOCARBON AND OTHER DATING METHODS
75. 1. Dating of Lime Mortar by ¹⁴C 721
76. 2. Comparison of ¹⁴C Ages and Ionium Ages of Corals 733
77. 3 The Dating of Fossil Bones using Amino Acid Racemization 740
78. 4 Amino Acid Racemization Dating of Fossil Shell from Southern California 757
79. XI. APPENDIX
80. A Calibration Table for Conventional Radiocarbon Dates 777
81. Index 785