Archaeology Research

Wednesday 24 March 2021, 4pm

Enrico Crema: The good, the bad, and the ugly in radiocarbon-based paleo-demography

The increasing availability of large collections of radiocarbon dates has rekindled the interest in paleo-demography among archaeologists. The undoubtedly appealing opportunity to easily visualise proxies curves of population changes that can be easily juxtaposed with key events or paleoclimatic reconstructions has led to new insights, but also to rushed and potentially biased conclusions. In this talk, I will review some of the existing pitfalls in the use of radiocarbon-based paleodemography, suggest some new solutions and directions that I think are worth exploring, and present some applied case studies from the ongoing ENCOUNTER project.

For zoom link please register on Eventbrite

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First published: 21 March 2021