THE NEKSELØ FISH WEIR AND MARINE RESERVOIR EFFECT IN NEOLITHIZATION PERIOD DENMARK

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe Nekselø Wickerwork provides an unusually solid estimate on the marine reservoir age in the Holocene. The basis for this result is a 5200-year-old fish weir, built of hazel wood with a brief biological age of its own. Oysters settled on this construction. They had lived only for a short number of years when the fence capsized and was covered in mud and the mollusks suffocated. Based on the difference in radiocarbon (14C) age between accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) samples of oyster shells and wood, respectively, the marine reservoir age for this site is estimated to 273 ± 18 14C years. Re-evaluations of previously produced data from geological and archaeological sites of Holocene date in the Danish archipelago indicate marine reservoir ages in the same order as that of the Wickerwork. Consequently, we recommend the use of the new value, rather than the ca. 400 14C years hitherto favored, when correcting for the dietary induced reservoir effect in radiocarbon dates of humans and animals from the Late Mesolithic and Early Neolithic periods of this region.