11th March 2013, 08:35 PM
I've got a EBA pit soon to be published where they'd apparently been drying and burning waterlogged wood dragged out of an adjacent wetland - slight 3000yr discrepancy between C14 dates from the wood and the other stuff in the pit! Small bits of nutshell are highly suspect since it's really durable and floats about forever, unless there are, say, 500 nuts crammed into a small pit, Mr Prentice is right, they always have to be regarded as suspect - can do you an early Neo date from an Iron Age roundhouse... The worst are carbonised wheat grains which are round and exactly the right size for worm-burrows, so can now scientifically prove that the Neolithic in Wetherby continued up to only 900 yrs ago (cue all the Yorkshire jokes...), never touch cereals unless there's good evidence for them being contemporary to the context. In general avoid anything small enough for the worms unless there's reasons to think it belongs there.
Articulated bone can't be residual (or it wouldn't still be articulated) and nice sooty pot-residues are only likely to be still attached to the pot if it's in its primary point of deposition.
Having said all that, charcoal does have its uses, you can go too far disregarding it as C14-fodder, it's just rarely any use for tight dates - but am hoping Seedygirl's sample from the outer edge of her in situ charred post-base hits a nice steep bit on the calibration curve :face-approve:
Articulated bone can't be residual (or it wouldn't still be articulated) and nice sooty pot-residues are only likely to be still attached to the pot if it's in its primary point of deposition.
Having said all that, charcoal does have its uses, you can go too far disregarding it as C14-fodder, it's just rarely any use for tight dates - but am hoping Seedygirl's sample from the outer edge of her in situ charred post-base hits a nice steep bit on the calibration curve :face-approve: