Am I the only one who thinks carbon dating is overused on some sites?

I spent 3 months trying to date a burial site in coastal Oregon using carbon dating, and it kept giving me results off by thousands of years. Turns out the marine diet of the people there was throwing everything off, and I should have just looked at the shellfish remains up front. Has anyone else run into this problem with coastal sites?

3 comments

3 Comments

thea8571mo ago

lol yeah marine reservoir effect is a nightmare, I messed up a whole season of work in BC once because I forgot to account for it and all my dates were garbage.

clark.robin11d ago

Aw man, I gotta jump in here. The marine reservoir effect is a real pain but I think you're mixing up a couple things. Tree ring dating isn't something you can just do on any coastal site, you need specific wood samples that actually overlap with the time period you're looking at. And OSL can work but it's for sediment grains not bones or shells, so it wouldn't directly date the burial itself. The shellfish remains are probably your best bet for that site, but even then you gotta correct for the marine carbon. I've run into this exact mess before and what worked was getting charcoal from hearth features near the burial and dating that instead, since it gives you a cleaner terrestrial date.

olivia_harris191mo ago

That burial site in Oregon sounds rough. @thea857 hits it exactly - the marine reservoir effect is brutal for coastal work. Did you try any other dating methods like OSL or tree ring dating to cross-check the carbon results, or did the shellfish remains give you a solid enough timeline on their own? I've been burned by similar issues in the Pacific Northwest, and it's wild how much a diet can screw up a date.