Dates as Data: An Examination of the Peruvian Preceramic Radiocarbon Record

1987/01/01 by John W. Rick · 1 voice · 4 citations
Arts and Humanities · Earth and Planetary Sciences · Social Sciences · #Amazonian Archaeology and Ethnohistory #Archaeology and ancient environmental studies #Pacific and Southeast Asian Studies

paper · doi:10.2307/281060

openalex publication_date 1987/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/15

Abstract

Radiocarbon dates can provide an effective overview of regional trends in non-complex societies when treated in a quantitative manner. In spite of intervening biases, numbers of radiocarbon dates should reflect the patterns of occupation across time. Using the date record of preceramic Peru, I illustrate very different radiocarbon trends for highland and coastal zones. These suggest exponential growth, equilibrium, and altitude shift for the occupations of coastal, puna, and highland valley regions. Biases caused by variation in temporal and geographic investigation, and the effects of sea-level rise are considered, but I argue that general occupational patterns overshadow distortions of the date record.

Citations

• Bootstrap Methods: Another Look at the Jackknife
• The Archaeo-Ethnology of Hunter-Gatherers or the Tyranny of the Ethnographic Record in Archaeology

Cited by

• Comparing summed probability distributions of shoreline and radiocarbon dates from the Mesolithic Skagerrak coast of Norway
• Simple rules help select best hydrocarbon distillation scheme
• End-to-end Bayesian analysis for summarizing sets of radiocarbon dates
• Lessons for an invisible future from an invisible past: Risk and resilience in deep time

Discussions

• This idea was popularized by Stanford's own John Rick (https://doi.org/10.2307/281060), who suggested "In spite of intervening biases, numbers of radiocarbon dates should reflect the patterns of occup [bsky, 1 points, 1 comments]

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