Dendrochronology and Radiocarbon Dating: The Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research Connection

Radiocarbon Dating.

Tree-ring Analysis of Arbutus menziesii: Suitability for Dendrochronology

In order to establish an estimate of the ages of large Pacific madrone (Arbutus menziesii) trees growing atop the bluffs on Magnolia Boulevard in Seattle, Washington, I obtained stump-discs from madrones cut by the Seattle Parks Department in June 1994. Each disc was sectioned into smaller pieces to allow processing with standard woodworking techniques. After initial processing, each slab was s...

Radiocarbon Dating: The Continuing Revolution

Radiocarbon (I4C) dating, now in its fifth decade of general use, continues to be the most widely employed method of inferring chronometric age for late Pleistocene and Holocene age materials recovered from archeological contexts. Over the last decade, several technical advances in I4C studies have provided contexts for a number of significant applications in archeology that were previously eit...

Radiocarbon Dating of Ground Water

Radiocarbon dating of ground water is used in combination with the primary measurements of classical hydrological and chemical analyses. Radiocarbon dating will produce the best results when it involves multiple measurements or sequential sampling. The most useful data come from these comparisons and not from absolute ages. In the case of multiple measurements, the apparent ages of the ground w...

Radiocarbon Analysis of Pinus Lagunae Tree Rings: Implications for Tropical Dendrochronology

A promising species for tropical dendrochronology is Pinus lagunae, a pine tree found in Baja California Sur (Mexico) around lat 23.5°N. In 1995, we sampled a total of 27 wood cores from 13 Pinus lagunae trees in Sierra La Victoria (23°36′N, 109°56′W), just north of Sierra La Laguna, at an elevation of 1500–1600 m. Selected trees were locally dominant, but their ring-width patterns could not be...