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Dating archaeobotanical remains: a cautionary tale from Port au Choix, Newfoundland

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Abstract

In this paper we report on the first 14C dated archaeological seeds from the island of Newfoundland, Canada. Ninety-three archaeobotanical specimens were recovered from a midden deposit adjacent to a small dwelling at Point Riche (EeBi-20), a large Dorset Palaeoeskimo site near Port au Choix, northwestern Newfoundland. These remains were collected from a seemingly secure context within the midden, but AMS 14C testing of a sample of specimens produced modern 14C dates, indicating that the remains are intrusive to the Dorset occupation. While the majority of Newfoundland-based research assumes antiquity of archaeobotanical remains, we recommend using AMS 14C dating and other proxy data in future archaeobotanical studies to confirm antiquity prior to making interpretations regarding human–plant interactions.

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Acknowledgments

This research was conducted during Anstey’s Masters research at Memorial University, St. John’s, which was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Memorial University, the Canada Research Chairs Program, Parks Canada, the Institute for Social and Economic Research and the Provincial Archaeology Office. Vaughan Grimes, Memorial University, paid for the AMS dates and reviewed a draft of this paper. In addition to Anstey and Renouf, the 2010 excavation crew at Point Riche included Tom Farrell, Mariane Hardenberg, Dominique Lavers, Susan Penney, Tessa Plint and site supervisor Patricia Wells. We would like to thank John Southon and Hector Martinez at the Keck AMS Lab for their assistance and insight in preparing and running our samples and also Joe Hepburn at the University of British Columbia for his help with processing seeds for AMS dating. Finally, we would like to thank the Associate Editor and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Archaeology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, CB2 3DZ, UK

    Robert J. Anstey

  2. Department of Anthropology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, V6T 1Z1, Canada

    Eric J. Guiry

  3. Department of Archaeology, Memorial University, St. John’s, NL, A1C 5S7, Canada

    M. A. P. Renouf & Michael Deal

  4. Keck CCAMS Group, Department of Earth System Science, University of California, Irvine, B321 Croul Hall, Irvine, CA, 92697, USA

    Benjamin T. Fuller

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  1. Robert J. Anstey
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  2. Eric J. Guiry
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  4. Michael Deal
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Correspondence to Robert J. Anstey.

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Communicated by K. Brown.

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Anstey, R.J., Guiry, E.J., Renouf, M.A.P. et al. Dating archaeobotanical remains: a cautionary tale from Port au Choix, Newfoundland. Veget Hist Archaeobot 25, 75–84 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00334-015-0526-y

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