REASSESSMENT OF EXISTING MEASUREMENTS

All radiocarbon determinations from the Monument which were processed before 1994 were reassessed for reliability on both archaeological and scientific grounds. The exact provenance of all these samples had been recorded prior to submission for dating, enabling the site archive to be re-examined for further information.

Only one result (I-3216) was considered unreliable on purely archaeological grounds, although several more ( OxA-4879, OxA-4844, OxA-4903 and OxA-4901) were rejected when further archival material became available in October 1994.

Four determinations (I-2328, I-2384, I-3216, and I-2445) are considered unreliable because of the chemical processing which they received in the laboratory, and two further samples caused problems during analysis (BM-1079 and HAR-4878).

The remaining ten determinations processed before 1994 appear to be reasonably accurate estimates of the radiocarbon content of relevant archaeological material, although full quality assurance is available only for GU-5109.

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