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La Jolla Measurements of Radiocarbon in Tree-Ring Dated Wood

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2016

H E Suess
H E Suess*
Affiliation:
Mt Soledad Radiocarbon Laboratory, Department of Chemistry, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California 92093
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In 1969, at the Nobel Symposium on “Radiocarbon Variations and Absolute Chronology” in Uppsala, a curve was presented that illustrated the functional dependence of measured conventional radiocarbon dates on true historical ages of wood samples (Suess, 1971). The curve was derived from the results of La Jolla measurements of radiocarbon in bristlecone pine wood dendrochronologically dated by and obtained from Professor C W Ferguson of the University of Arizona (Ferguson, 1968). The curve was intended to be adequate for deriving calibrated radiocarbon dates and also for allowing fairly reliable estimates of the accuracy of the absolute dates obtained in this manner. The basis for the validity of this calibration is the well known fact that, for all practical purposes, wood samples that had grown at the same time show the same radiocarbon content. However, the reverse is not always true: Wood samples showing the same radiocarbon content do not necessarily have the same age because of the windings and steps of the curve (Stuiver and Suess, 1966).

Type
Research Article
Information
Radiocarbon , Volume 20 , Issue 1 , 1978 , pp. 1 - 18
Copyright
Copyright © The American Journal of Science 

References

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