Calibration of radiocarbon results pertaining to related archaeological events

With the advent of the high precision radiocarbon calibration curve there is an increasing demand from archaeologists for results, previously reported on the radiocarbon scale, to be expressed on the calendar scale. Furthermore, there is a general realization within the archaeological community that much more information can be derived from radiocarbon dating if the samples are taken from coherent, well-chosen contexts and if any available substantive archaeological information is included in the data analysis. This paper describes how the Bayesian approach to statistical data analysis can be used for the calibration of groups of radiocarbon results in situations where archaeological information is available a priori about the relationships between the contexts being dated. Recent innovations in the implementation of the Bayesian paradigm are used and the methodology is illustrated by the analysis of data arising from two archaeological excavations.

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