Journal
HOLOCENE
Volume 33, Issue 9, Pages 1154-1159Publisher
SAGE PUBLICATIONS LTD
DOI: 10.1177/09596836231176502
Keywords
charcoalisation; environmental reconstruction; inbuilt age; inherited age; radiocarbon dating; sedimentary sequences
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Radiocarbon dating of charcoal from the Macdonald River in Australia revealed calibrated ages spanning over 1700 years. The varying ages can be attributed to factors such as the age of living biomass, charcoalisation conditions, and transportation and storage processes. These findings caution against relying solely on radiocarbon dating of charcoal to interpret sedimentary histories and suggest that deposit age may not be reliably determined by charcoal age.
Radiocarbon dates on multiple individual charcoal fragments floating together down the Macdonald River, New South Wales, Australia, have calibrated ages spanning >1700 years. Partial explanations of this range of inherited ages can be attributed to the inbuilt age of living biomass, charcoalisation conditions, hillslope transport and storage and/or valley floor (fluvial) transport and storage, but the contribution of each of these components can be constrained only rarely. These results caution against using radiocarbon dating of charcoal as the sole dating technique to interpret Late-Holocene sedimentary histories. These findings also show that it is unlikely that deposit age has a dependable relationship to charcoal age.
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