Radiocarbon Analyses of Modern Organics at Monte Verde, Chile: No Evidence for a Local Reservoir Effect

Abstract

Radiocarbon measurements have been obtained on contemporary plant samples collected at the site of Monte Verde, Chile, to examine the possibility that a locall4C reservoir effect impinges on the accuracy of thel4C values obtained on previously recovered archaeological samples. Thel4C activity of the modern plants do not reveal any offset from expected contemporaryl4C values and thus provide no support for a major postulated reservoir effect at least for the recent past. Although there is, at present, no direct means of measuring potentiall4C reservoir offsets in the late Pleistocene for this region, we are not aware of any current data that would indicate that there have been major changes during geologically recent times.