Long-held ideas concerning early Neolithic Linearbandkeramik (LBK) settlements in central Europe have been thoroughly challenged in recent years, for example, regarding their internal organisation or the use-life of individual houses. These topics have now also been addressed with the help of large radiocarbon (14C) datasets. In the light of this discussion, we present findings of our ongoing research at Vráble in south-western Slovakia. Intensive prospection by fieldwalking, geophysics and sedimentology, complemented by targeted excavations and archaeobotanical investigations, aims to unravel social and temporal relationships between three adjacent LBK settlements. A total of 23 of the c.300 houses revealed by geophysical prospection have been dated. Bayesian chronological modelling of this dataset, comprising 109 14C ages from 104 samples, indicates that the three LBK settlements at Vráble coexisted, and that overall the LBK settlement lasted for c. 200–300 years. Our results imply a ‘short’ use-life for individual houses (median c.20–30 y), suggesting that relatively few houses were inhabited simultaneously. Our data suggest that the overall LBK population at Vráble might have increased over the course of occupation, but probably never exceeded 200–300 individuals, based on the number of houses that could have been occupied contemporaneously. We compare the Vráble evidence with Bayesian chronologies for other LBK sites, and discuss the implications of these findings for models of population agglomeration and recognising the environmental impact of early farming communities.

Radiocarbon (14C) results on cremated bone are frequently published in high-ranking journals, but 14C laboratories employ different pretreatment methods as they have divergent perceptions of what sources of contaminants might be present. We found pretreatment protocols to vary significantly between three laboratories (Brussels [RICH], Kiel [KIA], and Groningen [CIO]), which all have a long history of dating cremated bone. We present a case study of 6 sets of replicate dates, to compare laboratory pretreatment protocols, and a further 16 sets of inter-laboratory replicate measurements, which compare specific steps of the conversion and measuring process. The 14C results showed dates to be reproducible between the laboratories and consistent with the expected archaeological chronology. We found that differences in pretreatment, conversion to CO2 and accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) measurement to have no measurable influence on the majority of obtained results, suggesting that any possible diagenesis was probably restricted to the most soluble ≤5% of each sample, as this proportion of the sample mass was removed under all laboratory protocols.

This study is first attempt to refine Early Iron Age absolute chronology, specifically the timing of the Hallstatt C-D transition in southern Germany, using Bayesian chronological modelling of radiocarbon (14C) dates. The Hallstatt period (c.800–450 BC) marks the transition from prehistory to proto-history in Central Europe. The relative chronological framework for Hallstatt burials developed by the mid-twentieth century is still used today, but absolute dating is limited by the scarcity of dendrochronological dates and the perception that 14C dating in the Hallstatt period (HaC-HaD) is futile, due to the calibration plateau between c.750 and 400 cal BC. We present new AMS 14C dates on 16 HaC-HaD burials from a stratified sequence at Dietfurt an der Altmühl ‘Tennisplatz’ (Bavaria, Germany). This sequence is situated entirely on the ‘Hallstatt plateau’, but by combining 14C dating with osteological, stratigraphic, and typological information, we demonstrate that the plateau is no longer the ‘catastrophe’ for archaeological chronology once envisaged. Taking into account dendrochronological dating elsewhere, we show that at Dietfurt, the HaC-HaD transition almost certainly occurred before 650 cal BC, and most likely between 685 and 655 cal BC (68.3% probability), several decades earlier than usually assumed. We confirm the accuracy and robustness of this estimate by sensitivity testing. We suggest that it is now possible, and essential, to exploit the increased precision offered by AMS measurement and the IntCal20 14C calibration curve to re-evaluate absolute chronologies in Early Iron Age Europe and equivalent periods in other regions.

Experimental studies have shown that significant carbon exchange occurs between bone-apatite and the pyre atmosphere during cremation, which can cause a calendar date offset between the radiocarbon (14C) event and the date of cremation. There are limited empirical data available to assess the magnitude of such wood-age offsets, but the aim of this paper is to test if they can be modeled statistically. We present new 14C dates on modern bone cremated in realistic open-air experiments and on archaeological samples of cremated bone and associated organic material. Experimental results demonstrate a wide range of carbon exchange with a mean of 58.6 ± 14.8%. Archaeological results indicate that the wood-age offsets have an approximately exponential distribution. We test whether the default Charcoal Outlier_Model in OxCal v4.3, developed to reduce the impact of wood-age offsets in dates of charcoal, is appropriate for cremated bone, but find that it slightly underestimates apparent offsets. To counter the intrinsic age of both pyre fuel and unburned bio-apatite, we instead propose a bespoke Cremation Outlier_Model, which combines an exponential distribution of calendar age offsets with a minimum offset, and provides better estimates of the actual dates of cremations.

Multiple burial in medieval burial grounds are often interpreted as a result of disease, but it is difficult to test such hypotheses, as most acute infectious diseases leave no visible evidence on skeletal material. Scientific dating can potentially associate multiple burials with historically documented epidemics, but the precision required to exclude alternative explanations would normally be attainable only by dendrochronology. Here, we argue that by combining archaeological, osteological and paleodiet research in a Bayesian framework, we can exploit differences in dietary reservoir effects to refine the dates of multiple burials, and potentially date such events to within a range of <20 years. We present new radiocarbon (14C) and stable isotope (δ13C, δ15N) results from a medieval multiple grave at St Alban’s Odense, on the island of Funen in central Denmark. We show the ca. 150-yr spread in 14C ages of the five juveniles is compatible with differences in the amount of fish they consumed. Our chronological model, which combines marine reservoir effect correction with calendar age offsets based on osteological evidence, dates the multiple burial to cal AD 1425–1445 (95% probability), an interval in which two plague epidemics took place in Denmark.