Data for: The absolute chronology of Tripolye settlements in the Southern Bug-Dnieper and Middle Dnieper regions, ca. 4200–2950 cal BC
Description
Over the past three decades, the use of radiocarbon dating in archaeology has been revolutionized by improvements in methodology and analysis. The most obvious is the use of accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS), which allows for high-resolution dating of organic materials and offers far higher precision and turnaround time in relation to older conventional beta counting methods: gas proportional counting (GPC) and liquid scintillation counting (LSC). This “AMS revolution” has been further augmented by more extensive quality control measures, as well as by analytical advances such as improved calibration curves and the use of Bayesian sequencing to construct sequences of events and test chronological assumptions. AMS dating was initially slow to arrive in Ukraine in relation to contexts like Western Europe and North America, and slower yet to be applied to settlements of the Eneolithic Tripolye culture (ca. 5050-2950 BC). This situation changed dramatically in the past 5–10 years, as labs such as the Oxford Accelerator Unit (OxA), Poznan (Poz), the Pennsylvania State University (PSUAMS), and Christian-Albrechts University of Kiel (KIA) have generated hundreds of AMS dates relating to a variety of Tripolye sites. The chapter linked to these data summarizes the state of absolute dating for the sites and local groups of the Eastern and Western Tripolye cultures (ETC and WTC, respectively) in the Southern Bug-Dnieper interfluve and the Middle Dnieper region (Kirovograd, Cherkassy, and Kiev oblasts of Ukraine). Through the use of Bayesian sequencing, it is now possible to provide more complete pictures of the absolute chronology for the ETC sites of the Bug-Dnieper / Kolomyjshchinskaya / Chapaevskaya / Sofievskaya local group sequence and WTC sites of the Vladimirovskaya / Nebelevskaya / Tomashovskaya / Kosenovskaya local group sequence. The attached data include all 300 radiocarbon dates and available metadata pertaining to sites of the Tripolye culture in these regions that have been published to date, as well as OxCal CQL2 code for replicating the chapter's analyses.
Files
Steps to reproduce
All data, results, and scripting code to reproduce the analysis are included in the attached spreadsheet.