The Marine ΔR for Nenumbo (Solomon Islands): A Case Study in Calculating Reservoir Offsets from Paired Sample Data

Abstract

It is necessary to calculate location-specific marine Delta-R values in order to calibrate marine samples using calibration curves such as those provided through the IntCal98 (Stuiver et al. 1998) data. Where known-age samples are available, this calculation is straightforward (i.e. Stuiver et al. 1986). In the case that a paired marine/terrestrial sample calculation is performed, however, the standard calculation (i.e. Stuiver and Braziunas 1993) requires that the samples are treated as relating to isochronous events. This may not be an appropriate assumption for many archaeological paired samples. In this paper, we present an approach to calculating marine Delta-R values that does not require the dated events to be treated as isochronous. When archaeological evidence allows the dated events to be tightly temporally constrained, the approach presented here and that described by Stuiver and Braziunas (1993) give very similar results. However, where tight temporal constraints are less certain, the 2 approaches can give rise to differing results. The example analysis considered here shows that a Delta-R of 81 +/- 64 14C yr is appropriate for samples in the vicinity of Nenumbo (Reef Islands, southeast Solomon Islands) around the period 2000-3000 BP.