The New Zealand Kauri (Agathis australis) Research Project: A Radiocarbon Dating Intercomparison of Younger Dryas Wood and Implications for IntCal13

Alan Hogg, Chris Turney, Jonathan Palmer, John Southon, Bernd Kromer, Christopher Bronk Ramsey, Gretel Boswijk, Pavla Fenwick, Alexandra Noronha, Richard Staff, Michael Friedrich, Linda Reynard, Dominik Guetter, Lukas Wacker, Richard Jones

Abstract


We describe here the New Zealand kauri (Agathis australis) Younger Dryas (YD) research project, which aims to undertake Δ14C analysis of ~140 decadal floating wood samples spanning the time interval ~13.1–11.7 kyr cal BP. We report 14C intercomparison measurements being undertaken by the carbon dating laboratories at University of Waikato (Wk), University of California at Irvine (UCI), and University of Oxford (OxA). The Wk, UCI, and OxA laboratories show very good agreement with an interlaboratory comparison of 12 successive decadal kauri samples (average offsets from consensus values of –7 to +4 14C yr). A University of Waikato/University of Heidelberg (HD) intercomparison involving measurement of the YD-age Swiss larch tree Ollon505, shows a HD/Wk offset of ~10–20 14C yr (HD younger), and strong evidence that the positioning of the Ollon505 series is incorrect, with a recommendation that the 14C analyses be removed from the IntCal calibration database.

DOI: 10.2458/azu_js_rc.v55i2.16217


Keywords


sub-fossil kauri;New Zealand;Younger Dryas

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