The younger dryas episode and the radiocarbon chronologies of the Lake Huleh and Ghab Valley pollen diagrams, Israel and Syria

Pollen diagrams from the former Lake Huleh in Israel and the Ghab Valley in Syria are the most important records of vegetation change in the Levant during the Lateglacial and early Holocene. Environmentally deterministic explanations of the development of agriculture in this region therefore rely on the accuracy of the diagrams' radiocarbon chronologies. Radiocarbon results at both sites are subject to large reservoir effects, however: the C-14 content of modern water from the Huleh basin implies that the Huleh radiocarbon results require corrections of up to 5500 C-14 years. A revised chronology of the latest Huleh pollen diagram is proposed. This is consistent with the regional vegetation sequence recorded in eastern Mediterranean marine sediments. The regional sequence also provides the most plausible chronology for the Ghab pollen diagrams.