Challenges and prospects for building radiocarbon chronologies of the earlier Holocene of the Levant

This paper explores the challenges of building radiocarbon chronologies of the earlier Holocene of South-West Asia. The analysis consists of a technical and a taphonomic review of a selection of the published 14C record, followed by a modelling study of a sub-section of that data. This sketches the kinds of chronological syntheses we can hope to construct, given the nature of the sites in the region. The key observation from the review of individual radiocarbon determinations is that reliable radiocarbon dating contexts are very limited. This is due to taphonomic ambiguity associated with charred plant remains and the persisting difficulties in dating skeletal remains from South-West Asia. The modelling study highlights the challenges of tracing events, such as site onset and abandonment, on complex, long-lived sites, and the large extent of chronological ambiguity stemming, to a large extent, from the taphonomic challenges. Many of these issues might be resolved through new 14C extraction techniques, the ongoing improvement of excavation methods, as well as rethinking chronological syntheses with a greater focus on relationships between specific contexts