Acerbic, abusive, brilliant, brusque, eclectic, exasperating, insightful, irritating, patient, patronizing, gentleman—these are but a few of the terms I have heard applied to Bob Stuckenrath over the 24-year period that I knew him. Their contradictory diversity serves to capture, if not the essence, at least some of his many different facets as a man and scholar.

Radiocarbon dating results of mammoth tusks, teeth and bones collected on Wrangel Island between 1989 and 1991 reveal a unique mammoth refugium during the Holocene. We used an improved chemical procedure to obtain and purify collagen from bone. Benzene synthesized from the samples was measured using a liquid scintillation counter. The validity of our data has been confirmed by the results of our measurements on two international control sample series (IAEA and TIRI) and by parallel measurements of Wrangel Island mammoth remains at other laboratories.

A harvest of 300 radiocarbon dates on extinct elephants (Proboscidea) from the northern parts of the New and Old Worlds has revealed a striking difference. While catastrophic in North America, elephant extinction was gradual in Eurasia (Stuart 1991), where straight-tusked elephants (Palaeoloxodon antiquus) vanished 50 millennia or more before woolly mammoths (Mammuthus primigenius). The range of the woolly mammoths started shrinking before 20 ka ago (Vartanyan et al. 1995). By 12 ka bp, the beasts were very scarce or absent in western Europe. Until the dating of Wrangel Island tusks and teeth (Vartanyan, Garrutt and Sher 1993), mammoths appeared to make their last stand on the Arctic coast of Siberia ca. 10 ka bp. The Wrangel Island find of dwarf mammoths by Sergy Vartanyan, V. E. Garrut and Andrei Sher (1993) stretched the extinction chronology of mammoths another 6 ka, into the time of the pharaohs.

We report on new 14C measurements of samples of 18 texts (scrolls) and 2 linen fragments from Qumran Caves 1, 2, and 4 and from Nahal Hever, both in the Dead Sea region. The radiocarbon results are in good agreement with estimates of age based on paleography.

The Dead Sea Scrolls have been analyzed by paleographic, non-destructive and destructive testing. The dates of their creation have been in dispute since their discovery. Research has established their authenticity, but a variety of conditions including the methods of skin preparation, variation in storage conditions and post-discovery restoration treatments could have introduced changes now affecting dating efforts. Comprehensive analyses were not possible until recently. Such analysis must be performed to establish a concrete framework for all the texts.

Professor R. B. Blake told a story in response to a question of why so little remained of writing on leather. He said that on one of his expeditions to Asia Minor, one of his native servants exhibited proudly some chamois trousers of his own manufacture, upon which Professor Blake detected with sorrow, traces of medieval writing (Reed 1972).

High-precision measurements were completed concurrently at the University of Arizona and the Queen's University of Belfast on blind samples of Irish oak originally measured for the 1986 radiocarbon calibration curve. Subsequent single-year Sequoiadendron results were decadally averaged and compared with published results on decadal Douglas-fir samples. The results of these intercomparisons show that the Arizona high-precision results compare favorably with published values from the University of Washington, but show a systematic offset with published Belfast data.

We present the results of the 14CO2 atmospheric monitoring station at the Smilde observation station, near Groningen, the Netherlands, a typical continental station. We compared these data, for absolute values and annual variation, with data from Fruholmen, Nordkapp, Norway and Izaña, Tenerife, Canary Islands, which are situated in areas less influenced by fossil-fuel CO2. The 20-yr Smilde record shows much seasonal variation (peak-to-trough variation is ∼30‰ in contrast to ∼12‰ for Fruholmen, and ∼5‰ for Izaña) and a lower overall value due to fossil-fuel consumption, in accordance with findings from similar stations in continental Western Europe. The Fruholmen and Izaña data show fairly equal mean Δ14C levels, but differ in seasonal amplitude. This difference could be due partly to the elevation difference between the stations. The Izaña station also has a slow exchange with the ground-level air because of an inversion layer. It is speculative whether annual injection of 14C from the stratosphere also plays a role. We give the Groningen long record of tritium in precipitation, showing profound seasonality.

Increased marine 14C reservoir ages from the surface water of the North Atlantic are documented for the Younger Dryas period. We use terrestrial and marine AMS 14C dates from the time of deposition of the Icelandic Vedde Ash to examine the marine 14C reservoir age. This changed from its modem North Atlantic value of ca. 400 yr to ca. 700 yr during the Younger Dryas climatic event. The increased marine reservoir age has implications for both comparing climatic time series dated by 14C and understanding palaeoceanographic changes that generated the increase.

Determined independently from annually laminated ice cores and lake sediments, and German pines, the calendar ages of Younger Dryas (YD) boundaries significantly disagree with one another. 14C dates, plotted vs. calendar ages for samples from different sediments, also reveal distinct offsets. The adjustment of varve chronologies to synchronize the boundaries of the YD nearly cancels the discrepancies between 14C data, and supports the synchronism of the YD cold period over the North Atlantic region. However, the exact timing of the event cannot be estimated in this way.

Terrestrial macrofossils selected from laminated sediment of Lake Gościąż were dated by AMS. Thus, part of the floating varve chronology (FVC) (Goslar et al. 1993) between radiocarbon ages of 4225 ± 45 and 7740 ± 85 bp can be compared and placed on the 14C calibration curve. As a result of our dating, the top of the FVC is now dated between 3120 and 3300 cal bp, i.e., 3210 ± 90 cal bp.

Radiocarbon dating of varved lake sediments shows that, during the Late Glacial (10–12 kyr bp), the offset between the 14C and the absolute time scales was ca. 1 kyr. Varve counting and accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) dating were used to build absolute and 14C time scales of sediments from two lakes—Soppensee, Switzerland and Holzmaar, Germany. The resulting chronologies extend back to ca. 12.9 kyr cal bp (12.1 kyr bp) in the case of Soppensee and to ca. 13.8 kyr cal BP (12.6 kyr bp) in the Holzmaar record. They compare well with each other but differ significantly from the 14C-U/Th chronology of corals (Bard et al. 1993; Edwards et al. 1993).

Lake and loess sediments represent archives that record important information about the iocal, regional and global climate conditions in the past. Lake sediments consist of autochthonous particles formed by biogeochemical processes within the lake and allochthonous particles brought into the lake from the catchment area. After deposition, the stratigraphy of the sediment can be altered by chemical, physical and biological processes. Under favored conditions, the sediment shows individual annual layers (varves), which can be used to date the sediment. Other dating methods are based on radioactive decay (14C, 210Pb) or on time markers such as tephra layers, deposits of natural catastrophes, e.g., floods, or radioactivity, e.g., emissions from a nuclear power plant.