Book Reviews

Proceedings of the 14th International Radiocarbon Conference. Austin Long (Editor), 1992, Radiocarbon 34, 665 pp., $65.00 (paperbound).

The Proceedings of the 14th International Radiocarbon Conference held in Tucson, Arizona, on May 20-24, 1991 and edited by Austin Long follows a long succession of proceedings of International Radiocarbon Conferences. This volume lives up to the high standards of quality seen in previous publications of the distinctive red-colored issues of Radiocarbon. Previous meetings a t Trondheim, Dubrovnik, Seattle, Heidelberg, and elsewhere all produced recognizably valuable proceedings volumes. The 14th Znterna- tional Radiocarbon Conference is no exception. The volume covers all new and important advances in 14C dating over the 3-year period since the previous conference. The Tucson meeting was the first that many scientists from eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union attended. The audience for this volume includes anyone who is actively engaged in radiocarbon research either from the standpoint of the method itself or as a user of 14C dates.

Following a rather “flamboyant” and typically spontaneous account of a typical day in a radiocarbon facility (by Meyer Rubin), the volume is divided into 6 sections. While the authors are too numerous to name in full, the individual sections include sample preparation and measurement, applied isotope geochemistry, global 14C production, paleoclimatology, archaeological applications, and notes and comments.

Some important highlights in the long list of articles include 14C dating of bone with a view to improving pretreatment of samples, analysis of background contamination, and other aspects of sample preparation. New information about high sensitivity 14C dating of samples in the 50,000-70,000 year B.P. range (by Austin Long and R. Kalin) will be of interest to researchers using conventional liquid scintillation counters without isotopic enrichment. Other articles in this section involve quantification of gamma flux in 14C laboratories, background contamination, the future of gas counting, and mini- sampling, which is valuable more to practitioners of the art than to users. Other articles in Section I, which account for more than half the volume length, include a number devoted to advances in AMS, especially the new facilities at Purdue University and Woods Hole. The last subsection in Part I deals with the important aspects of managing the large amount of 14C data and intercomparison of dates.

In the area of applications of 14C dating to specific studies involving geochronology and global change, several excellent articles dealing with 14C and 13C of soils, pollen, peat, and lacustrine sediments, as well as anthropogenic influences on 14C dating and comparisons of I4C with U/Th ages provide a wealth of information to the users of the 14C method. A number of articles in Section I1 also look a t problems associated with the 14C dating of groundwater.

Articles in Section I11 review some aspects of variation in global 14C production, including an important discussion of ozone depletion in the global carbon cycle and 14C activity in tree rings over short intervals of a few decades.

In the field of paleoclimatology, several articles dealing with tree ring width a t the

Geoarchaeology: An International Journal, Vol. 9, No. 1, 75-78 (1994) 0 1994 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. CCC 0883-6353/94/010075-04

BOOK REVIEWS

Two Creeks site (Wisconsin), 13C variations in C3 plants over the last 50,000 years, 14C variations in Tasmanian conifers over late glacial/Holocene time, monsoon fluctuations inferred from dating of the Baxie Loess Profile in China, dating of lake-level fluctuations in central Poland, and dating of gastropods in the Hungarian Plain show the extent to which 14C is important in the elucidating of climatic changes throughout the late Pleistocene and Holocene periods.

Of the 11 articles devoted to archeological applications, an increasing number involve AMS precision dating of the Dead Sea Scrolls (Bonani et al.), precolumbian museum pieces (Mark et al.), British beakers (Ambers et al.), pottery (Hedges et al.), iron artifacts (Cresswell) and mortar and copper-preserved organics (Beukens et al.). Indeed, the presence of any minute organic matter in human-made substances seems to result eventually in some archaeological analysis.

The last (but by no means the least) section involves reports from other 14C workshops which are important both to practitioners and users. In particular, the summary of “Paleoenvironments of the eastern Mediterranean, 19 May 1991” (Kra and Bar-Yosef) will prove particularly valuable to users of 14C in the Middle East.

While addressing the needs and aspirations of Quaternary scientists in general, the volume also makes major contributions to geoarchaeology. In particular, the great range of new materials being dated and the use of AMS dating methods by archaeologists attest to the great enthusiasm and vigor with which geoarchaeologists pursue important questions. There are relatively few typographical errors in the volume. The text is highly accurate and readable, no doubt due to the high standards employed by the editor, managing editor R. S. Kra, and assistant editors F. D. Moskovitz and J. M. Devine at Radiocarbon.

William C. Mahaney Geomorphology & Pedology Laboratory

York University 4700 Keele St.

North York, Ontario, Canada M3J 1P3

Materials Issues in Art and Archaeology. Edward V. Sayre, Pamela B. Vandiver, James Druzik, and Christopher Stevenson (Editors), 1988, Materials Research Society, Symposium Proceedings 123, xiii + 321 pp., $30.00 (clothbound).

Materials Issues in Art and Archaeology 11. Pamela B. Vandiver, James Druzik, and George Seagon Wheeler (Editors), 1991, Materials Research Soci- ety, Symposium Proceedings 185, xxvii + 844 pp. $30.00 (clothbound).

The 1988 symposium on ancient materials resulted in publication of Symposium Proceedings, Volume 123 of the Materials Research Society. This volume contains seven invited and 32 contributed articles and is divided into three sections: Structural and

76 VOL. 9, NO. 1