The hardwater effect in AMS 14C dating of food crusts on pottery

Abstract

The pottery investigated in this study comes from late mesolithic inland sites next to rivers in Northern Germany. The first AMS 14C datings of food crusts from these sites showed surprisingly high ages, which could be caused by the hardwater effect. Modern samples from the rivers have ages of several hundred 14C years, and a modern food crust prepared from fish with a certain reservoir age shows the same age as the fish. Surprisingly, there was a large age difference between water samples and fish/mollusc shell from the same river. Associated archaeological samples of terrestrial and fluvial origin show age differences of several hundred and up to 3000 years. These high age differences are only to a limited extent transferred to the archaeological food crusts.