Excavation at Aguas Buenas, Robinson Crusoe Island, Chile, of a gunpowder magazine and the supposed campsite of Alexander Selkirk, together with an account of early navigational dividers

Excavations were undertaken of a ruined building at Aguas Buenas, identified as an 18th-century Spanish gunpowder magazine. Evidence was also found for the campsite of an early European occupant of the island. A case is made that this was Alexander Selkirk, a castaway here from 1704 to 1709. Selkirk was the model for Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. A detailed discussion is given of a fragment of copper alloy identifi ed as being from a pair of navigational dividers

A 1400-Year Oxygen Isotope History from the Ross Sea Area, Antarctica

Four ice cores from the Ross Sea drainage, Antarctica, show patterns of δ18O variations on a time scale of decades to centuries over the last 1400 years without change in the long-term average δ18O. Century scale δ18O fluctuations in the two cores drilled in the Ross Ice Shelf at Station J-9 (82° 23\u27 S, 168° 38\u27 W, elevation 60 m) are highly correlated (P \u3c 2 x 10-4). The long isotope record (\u3e30 000 a) of the 1978 1-9 core thus represents local conditions over at least 102 m and on time scales of 100 years and longer. Regional correlations between the 1-9 δ18O records and those from Ridge BC (82 ° 54\u27S, 136 ° 40\u27W, elevation 509 m) and the Dominion Range (85 ° 15\u27 S, 166 ° 10\u27 E, elevation 2700 m) are barely significant (P ≈ 0.05 for J-9 \u2776 and Dominion Range, δ18O to 1400 years ago) or absent. The failure to find clear regional isotope trends related to climate fluctuations may reflect the finding that between 1957 and 1982 the area was in the transition zone between areas with opposite temperature trends, and showed little or no temperature change. The fact that the records nevertheless show significant δ18O fluctuations highlights the need to base regional climate reconstructions on a regional suite of ice-core records

INTCAL98 radiocarbon age calibration, 24,000-0 cal BP

The focus of this paper is the conversion of radiocarbon ages to calibrated (cal) ages for the interval 24,000-0 cal BP (Before Present, 0 cal BP = AD 1950), based upon a sample set of dendrochronologically dated tree rings, uranium-thorium dated corals, and varve-counted marine sediment. The (14)C age-cal age information, produced by many laboratories, is converted to Delta(14)C profiles and calibration curves, for the atmosphere as well as the oceans. We discuss offsets in measured (14)C ages and the errors therein, regional (14)C age differences, tree-coral (14)C age comparisons and the time dependence of marine reservoir ages, and evaluate decadal vs. single-year (14)C results. Changes in oceanic deepwater circulation, especially for the 16,000-11,000 cal sp interval, are reflected in the Delta(14)C values of INTCAL98

Low reservoir ages for the surface ocean from mid-Holocene Florida corals

Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2008. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Paleoceanography 23 (2008): PA2209, doi:10.1029/2007PA001527.The 14C reservoir age of the surface ocean was determined for two Holocene periods (4908–4955 and 3008–3066 calendar (cal) B.P.) using U/Th-dated corals from Biscayne National Park, Florida, United States. We found that the average reservoir ages for these two time periods (294 ± 33 and 291 ± 27 years, respectively) were lower than the average value between A.D. 1600 and 1900 (390 ± 60 years) from corals. It appears that the surface ocean was closer to isotopic equilibrium with CO2 in the atmosphere during these two time periods than it was during recent times. Seasonal δ 18O measurements from the younger coral are similar to modern values, suggesting that mixing with open ocean waters was indeed occurring during this coral's lifetime. Likely explanations for the lower reservoir age include increased stratification of the surface ocean or increased Δ14C values of subsurface waters that mix into the surface. Our results imply that a more correct reservoir age correction for radiocarbon measurements of marine samples in this location from the time periods ∼3040 and ∼4930 cal years B.P. is ∼292 ± 30 years, less than the canonical value of 404 ± 20 years.NSF Chemical Oceanography program provided monetary support under grants OCE-9711326, OCE-0137207, and OCE-0551940 (to ERMD)

Methodological approaches to determining the marine radiocarbon reservoir effect

The marine radiocarbon reservoir effect is an offset in 14C age between contemporaneous organisms from the terrestrial environment and organisms that derive their carbon from the marine environment. Quantification of this effect is of crucial importance for correct calibration of the <sup>14</sup>C ages of marine-influenced samples to the calendrical timescale. This is fundamental to the construction of archaeological and palaeoenvironmental chronologies when such samples are employed in <sup>14</sup>C analysis. Quantitative measurements of temporal variations in regional marine reservoir ages also have the potential to be used as a measure of process changes within Earth surface systems, due to their link with climatic and oceanic changes. The various approaches to quantification of the marine radiocarbon reservoir effect are assessed, focusing particularly on the North Atlantic Ocean. Currently, the global average marine reservoir age of surface waters, R(t), is c. 400 radiocarbon years; however, regional values deviate from this as a function of climate and oceanic circulation systems. These local deviations from R(t) are expressed as +R values. Hence, polar waters exhibit greater reservoir ages (δR = c. +400 to +800 <sup>14</sup>C y) than equatorial waters (δR = c. 0 <sup>14</sup>C y). Observed temporal variations in δR appear to reflect climatic and oceanographic changes. We assess three approaches to quantification of marine reservoir effects using known age samples (from museum collections), tephra isochrones (present onshore/offshore) and paired marine/terrestrial samples (from the same context in, for example, archaeological sites). The strengths and limitations of these approaches are evaluated using examples from the North Atlantic region. It is proposed that, with a suitable protocol, accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) measurements on paired, short-lived, single entity marine and terrestrial samples from archaeological deposits is the most promising approach to constraining changes over at least the last 5 ky BP

Evidence for solar cycles in a late Holocene speleothem record from Dongge Cave, China

The association between solar activity and Asian monsoon (AM) remains unclear. Here we evaluate the possible connection between them based on a precisely-dated, high-resolution speleothem oxygen isotope record from Dongge Cave, southwest China during the past 4.2 thousand years (ka). Without being adjusted chronologically to the solar signal, our record shows a distinct peak-to-peak correlation with cosmogenic nuclide 14C, total solar irradiance (TSI) and sunspot number (SN) at multi-decadal to centennial timescales. Further cross-wavelet analyses between our calcite δ18O and atmospheric 14C show statistically strong coherence at three typical periodicities of ~80, 200 and 340 years, suggesting important roles of solar activities in modulating AM changes at those timescales. Our result has further indicated a better correlation between our calcite δ18O record and atmospheric 14C than between our record and TSI. This better correlation may imply that the Sun–monsoon connection is dominated most likely by cosmic rays and oceanic circulation (both associated to atmospheric 14C), instead of the direct solar heating (TSI)