Recent and Planned Developments of the Program OxCal

2013/01/01 by Christopher Bronk Ramsey, Sharen Lee · 1,469 citations
Arts and Humanities · Earth and Planetary Sciences · Engineering · Mathematics · #Archaeology and ancient environmental studies #Computer science #Data mining #Data science #Engineering #Geology and Paleoclimatology Research #Machine learning #Maritime and Coastal Archaeology #Mathematics #Operations research #Presentation (obstetrics) #Programming language #Range (aeronautics) #Software #Statistical analysis #Statistical model #Statistics #Visualization

paper · doi:10.1017/s0033822200057878

published in Radiocarbon 55(2), 720-730 (Cambridge University Press)

openalex publication_date 2013/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01

Abstract

OxCal is a widely used software package for the calibration of radiocarbon dates and the statistical analysis of 14 C and other chronological information. The program aims to make statistical methods easily available to researchers and students working in a range of different disciplines. This paper will look at the recent and planned developments of the package. The recent additions to the statistical methods are primarily aimed at providing more robust models, in particular through model averaging for deposition models and through different multiphase models. The paper will look at how these new models have been implemented and explore the implications for researchers who might benefit from their use. In addition, a new approach to the evaluation of marine reservoir offsets will be presented. As the quantity and complexity of chronological data increase, it is also important to have efficient methods for the visualization of such extensive data sets and methods for the presentation of spatial and geographical data embedded within planned future versions of OxCal will also be discussed.

Citations

• Bayesian Analysis of Radiocarbon Dates

Cited by

• Methods for Summarizing Radiocarbon Datasets
• Radiocarbon Wiggle Matching on Laminated Sediments Delivers High-Precision Chronologies
• In the bosom of the Earth: a new megalithic monument at the Antequera World Heritage Site
• Site Organization and Mobility Strategies: The Early and Middle Holocene Stone Structures from Takarkori Rock Shelter (Southwestern Libya)
• Genome Shows no Recent Inbreeding in Near-Extinction Woolly Rhinoceros Sample Found in Ancient Wolf's Stomach
• Interpreting 14C Measurements on 3rd–4th Century AD Iron Artifacts from Nydam, Denmark
• Summer warmth between 15,500 and 15,000 years ago enabled human repopulation of the northwest European margin
• Maize monoculture supported pre-Columbian urbanism in southwestern Amazonia
• Retreat dynamics of the eastern sector of the British–Irish Ice Sheet during the last glaciation
• Jaguars and raptorial birds: The ancient wood carving arts of Northeastern South America (Trombetas River region, Brazil)
• A Multi-Proxy Investigation of the Anthropogenic Landscape Near the Early Bronze Age Building VII at Al-Khashbah, Oman
• Bronze Age crop processing evidence in the phytolith assemblages from the ditch and fen around Fondo Paviani, northern Italy
• Genome Sequence of a 5,310-Year-Old Maize Cob Provides Insights into the Early Stages of Maize Domestication
• Climate Variability and Glacier Dynamics Linked to Fjord Productivity Changes Over the Last ca. 3300 Years in Nuup Kangerlua, Southwest Greenland
• Cryptotephra preserved in Lake Suigetsu (SG14 core) reveals the eruption timing and distribution of ash fall from Japanese volcanoes during the Late-glacial to early Holocene
• Continuity of eastern Beringian megafauna phylogenetic diversity following deposition of the Late Pleistocene Dawson tephra
• Ex Oriente Lux? A quantitative comparison between northern Ahmarian and Protoaurignacian
• Trunk river and tributary interactions recorded in the Pleistocene–Holocene stratigraphy of the Po Plain (northern Italy)
• Ancient genomes from the Qing Dynasty reveal unbroken genetic continuity in China's Central Plains
• Social Stratification Without Genetic Differentiation at the Xisima Site in the Late Shang Dynasty
• Ancient DNA indicates 3,000 years of genetic continuity in the Northern Iranian Plateau, from the Copper Age to the Sassanid Empire
• Genetic Formation of Neolithic Hongshan People and Demic Expansion of Hongshan Culture Inferred From Ancient Human Genomes
• Double feature: First genetic evidence of a mother-daughter double burial in Roman period Austria
• Borneo Stalagmite Evidence of Significantly Reduced El Niño‐Southern Oscillation Variability at 4.1 kyBP
• Ancient genomes uncover dynamic cultural and genetic interplay in the eastern Tianshan
• A new conservative and robust Bayesian approach for the event date model in chronology building
• Chronology, cryostratigraphy, and palaeoenvironmental evidence from the CRREL Permafrost Tunnel, Alaska
• Stadial–interstadial climate oscillations influence postglacial ecological succession at the southwestern margin of the Fennoscandian Ice Sheet: insights from sedimentary ancient DNA
• The deep population history of northern East Asia from the Late Pleistocene to the Holocene
• Mineral species and formation processes: Raman spectroscopic and microscopic analysis of stains from a late pleistocene continental drowned faunal bone assemblage, Central Chile
• A major, intraplate, normal‐faulting earthquake: The 1739 Yinchuan event in northern China
• Mesolithic harpoons from Odmut, Montenegro: Chronological, contextual, and techno-functional analyses
• Spatial modeling of archaeological site locations based on summed probability distributions and hot-spot analyses: A case study from the Three Kingdoms Period, Korea
• Earliest Herders of the Central Sahara (Tadrart Acacus Mountains, Libya): A Punctuated Model for the Emergence of Pastoralism in Africa
• Vegetation and climate changes during the Middle to Upper Palaeolithic transition in the southwestern Mediterranean: What happened to the last Neanderthals during Heinrich stadial 4?
• Stratigraphy and vegetation signals from an upland, landslide‐dammed, paleolake during the Last Glacial‐Interglacial Transition, Waipaoa Sedimentary System, Hikurangi Margin, eastern North Island, New Zealand
• Late Quaternary mammal introduction and extinction records from archaeological cave deposits in Timor-Leste
• Ancient genomes reveal insights into ritual life at Chichén Itzá
• Macrofossil evidence of alder (Alnus sp.) in Britain early in the Late Glacial Interstadial: implications for the northern cryptic refugia debate
• An early dog from southeast Alaska supports a coastal route for the first dog migration into the Americas
• Radiocarbon Dating of Early Dynastic Mesopotamia: Results, Limitations, and Prospects
• “What are the dead for?” Bronze Age burials in a multi-period landscape at Bucklow Hill, Cheshire
• Human occupation of northern Australia by 65,000 years ago
• Biostratigraphic Evidence Relating to the Age-Old Question of Hannibal's Invasion of Italy, I: History and Geological Reconstruction
• Reconnaissance of the Hannibalic Route in the Upper Po Valley, Italy: Correlation with Biostratigraphic Historical Archaeological Evidence in the Upper Guil Valley, France
• The dawn of dentistry in the late upper Paleolithic: An early case of pathological intervention at Riparo Fredian
• Mentesh Tepe, an early settlement of the Shomu-Shulaveri Culture in Azerbaijan
• Global Peak in Atmospheric Radiocarbon Provides a Potential Definition for the Onset of the Anthropocene Epoch in 1965
• Mammal extinction facilitated biome shift and human population change during the last glacial termination in East-Central Europe
• The Quaternary lions of Ukraine and a trend of decreasing size in Panthera spelaea
• Collapse of the mammoth-steppe in central Yukon as revealed by ancient environmental DNA
• Postglacial viability and colonization in North America’s ice-free corridor
• Linking late Paleoindian stone tool technologies and populations in North, Central and South America
• Tunnug 1 (Arzhan 0) – an early Scythian kurgan in Tuva Republic, Russia
• The onset of faba bean farming in the Southern Levant
• Radiocarbon dating the pace of monument construction and village aggregation at Garden Patch: A ceremonial center on the Florida Gulf Coast
• Parallel palaeogenomic transects reveal complex genetic history of early European farmers
• Radiocarbon dating of glacier ice: overview, optimisation, validation and potential
• The genetic history of Ice Age Europe
• Abrupt Alnus population decline at the end of the first millennium CE in Europe – The event ecology, possible causes and implications
• Runes from Lány (Czech Republic) - The oldest inscription among Slavs. A new standard for multidisciplinary analysis of runic bones
• Spatiotemporal clustering of great earthquakes on a transform fault controlled by geometry
• A Common Genetic Origin for Early Farmers from Mediterranean Cardial and Central European LBK Cultures
• Mammuthus Population Dynamics in Late Pleistocene North America: Divergence, Phylogeography, and Introgression
• The spread of steppe and Iranian-related ancestry in the islands of the western Mediterranean
• Eye lens radiocarbon reveals centuries of longevity in the Greenland shark ( Somniosus microcephalus )
• ‘White gold’ guano fertilizer drove agricultural intensification in the Atacama Desert from ad 1000
• Evidence for distal transport of reworked Andean tephra: Extending the cryptotephra framework from the Austral volcanic zone
• Temporal Inflection Points in Decorated Pottery: A Bayesian Refinement of the Late Formative Chronology in the Southern Lake Titicaca Basin, Bolivia
• Genome data on the extinct Bison schoetensacki establish it as a sister species of the extant European bison (Bison bonasus). [europepmc]
• Radiocarbon dating minute amounts of bone (3-60 mg) with ECHoMICADAS. [europepmc]
• Biomarker-indicated extent of oxidation of plant-derived organic carbon (OC) in relation to geomorphology in an arsenic contaminated Holocene aquifer, Cambodia. [europepmc]
• High Resolution AMS Dates from Shubayqa 1, northeast Jordan Reveal Complex Origins of Late Epipalaeolithic Natufian in the Levant. [europepmc]
• The Cultural Project: Formal Chronological Modelling of the Early and Middle Neolithic Sequence in Lower Alsace. [europepmc]
• Global Peak in Atmospheric Radiocarbon Provides a Potential Definition for the Onset of the Anthropocene Epoch in 1965. [europepmc]
• Pre-Columbian earth-builders settled along the entire southern rim of the Amazon. [europepmc]
• The unique functioning of a pre-Columbian Amazonian floodplain fishery. [europepmc]
• Uncoupling human and climate drivers of late Holocene vegetation change in southern Brazil. [europepmc]
• Abrupt high-latitude climate events and decoupled seasonal trends during the Eemian. [europepmc]
• A 1,000-Year-Old RNA Virus. [europepmc]
• Ancient RNA from Late Pleistocene permafrost and historical canids shows tissue-specific transcriptome survival. [europepmc]
• Ancient DNA from the skeletons of Roopkund Lake reveals Mediterranean migrants in India. [europepmc]
• Consequences of past climate change and recent human persecution on mitogenomic diversity in the arctic fox. [europepmc]
• Highly divergent lineage of narrow-headed vole from the Late Pleistocene Europe. [europepmc]
• Tracking the Near Eastern origins and European dispersal of the western house mouse. [europepmc]
• Direct dating reveals the early history of opium poppy in western Europe. [europepmc]
• Pluridisciplinary evidence for burial for the La Ferrassie 8 Neandertal child. [europepmc]
• An early dog from southeast Alaska supports a coastal route for the first dog migration into the Americas. [europepmc]
• Climate variation during the Holocene influenced the skeletal properties of Chamelea gallina shells in the North Adriatic Sea (Italy). [europepmc]
• Reconstructing genetic histories and social organisation in Neolithic and Bronze Age Croatia. [europepmc]
• "Ancient DNA" reveals that the scientific name for an extinct tortoise from Cape Verde refers to an extant South American species. [europepmc]
• Olive shrub buried on Therasia supports a mid-16th century BCE date for the Thera eruption. [europepmc]
• Pleistocene chronology and history of hominins and fauna at Denisova Cave. [europepmc]
• Genetic Formation of Neolithic Hongshan People and Demic Expansion of Hongshan Culture Inferred From Ancient Human Genomes. [europepmc]

Related

• Bayesian Analysis of Radiocarbon Dates
• Radiocarbon Calibration and Analysis of Stratigraphy: The OxCal Program
• Methods for Summarizing Radiocarbon Datasets
• A New Method for High-Resolution Dating of Radiocarbon Data: The Example of the First Three Centuries B.C
• INFERENCE FROM LARGE SETS OF RADIOCARBON DATES: SOFTWARE AND METHODS