Preface—Radiocarbon and Diet: Aquatic Food Resources and Reservoir Effects

Abstract

One of the most exciting fields in current radiocarbon research is the study of aquatic radiocarbon reservoir effects (RREs). Potential RREs pose a challenge when chronologies are based on ¹⁴C dating of food or human remains, providing an impetus for new and improved efforts to detect and quantify RREs in archaeological materials. Examples of such developments include compound-specific isotopic and ¹⁴C analysis, and novel statistical methods to reconstruct ancient diets. Awareness of RREs has also created new research opportunities; in particular, radiocarbon is increasingly being employed as an environmental and dietary tracer in ecological and archaeological studies, requiring a better understanding of the spatial and temporal variability of aquatic RREs.