Isotopen in de archeologie – verleden, heden en toekomst

Abstract

Isotopes in archaeology – past, present and future. The archaeological institute of the University of Groningen is celebrating its 100th birthday. For 70 of these years, it has co-existed with the radiocarbon laboratory of the same university. We give a short introduction of their common history and what they have achieved together. We illustrate this with some highlights from our research. For the future, we discuss possibilities of new collaborative research, enabled by a new, state-of-the-art AMS (Accelerator Mass Spectrometry) machine.

Hessel De Vries: Radiocarbon Pioneer From Groningen

“…Environmental and paleoclimate reconstructions became increasingly part of archaeological research at the BAI, where van Giffen had long been investigating the interplay of local sea level, coastal settlements, and dwelling mounds. When van Giffen was succeeded as director of the BAI in 1954 by the palynologist H. T. (Tjalling) Waterbolk, a close collaboration between archaeology and physics, the BAI and the Radiocarbon Laboratory developed (de Vries et al 1958; de Vries and Waterbolk 1958; Dee and van der Plicht 2021). At the Geological Survey, Zagwijn used palynology and radiocarbon to reconstruct climate fluctuations of the last ice age, and early on challenged the range of de Vries’s counters with samples of expected early-glacial and Eemian ages exposed at De Voorst in the Noordoostpolder, pumped dry in 1942 (de Vries et al 1958).…”