Human soft tissue specimens obtained by dissection of Greco-Roman Period mummies buried in the Dakhleh Oasis in Egypt's Western Desert had radiocarbon analytical results many of which were substantially older than accompanying artifacts suggested. Mass spectrometry suggested the presence of hydrocarbons. Gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GCMS) confirmed that the “resin” applied to these bod...

Most anthropologists agree that Neandertals disappeared ca. 40,000—30,000 years BP* (Larsen, 2008). Recent genomic research has indicated that Neandertals may have interbred with modern humans (Durand et al., 2011). In the 1950s at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Mesolithic human (hereafter referred to as hominin) bones from Hotu and Belt Caves, Iran, were...

The reliability of chronology is a prerequisite for meaningful paleoclimate reconstructions from sedimentary archives. The conventional approach of radiocarbon dating bulk organic carbon in lake sediments is often hampered by the old carbon effect, i.e., the assimilation of ancient dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) derived from carbonate bedrocks or other sources. Therefore, radiocarbon dating i...

The characterization of Last Glacial millennial-timescale warming phases, known as interstadials or Dansgaard-Oeschger events, requires precise chronologies for the study of paleoclimate records. On the European continent, such chronologies are only available for several Last Glacial pollen and rare speleothem archives principally located in the Mediterranean domain. Farther north, in continent...

Many lines of evidence point to the period between roughly 40 and 30 ka BP as the period in which modern humans arrived in Europe and displaced the indigenous Neandertal populations. At the same time, many innovations associated with the Upper Paleolithic--including new stone and organic technologies, use of personal ornaments, figurative art, and musical instruments--are first documented in th...

The article reports the radiocarbon investigation results of the Lebombo Eco Trail tree, a representative African baobab from Mozambique. Several wood samples collected from the large inner cavity and from the outer part of the tree were investigated by AMS radiocarbon dating. According to dating results, the age values of all samples increase from the sampling point with the distance into the ...

archaeological excavations on the western part of the central iranian plateau, known as the qazvin plain provides invaluable information about the sedentary communities from early occupation to the later prehistoric era. despite the past archeological data, chronological studies mostly rely on the relative use of the bayesian modeling for stratigraphically-related radiocarbon dates. the current...

This article reports on the use of digital image processing techniques to analyze an ultravioletfluorescence photograph of the area of the Shroud of Turin where the radiocarbon dating samples were taken. Results of this analysis demonstrate the anomalous nature of the radiocarbon data sample area. The techniques employed in this investigation are those used by the land remote sensing community ...