Radiocarbon dating with temporal order constraints

Geoff Nicholls and Martin Jones

Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series C, 2001, vol. 50, issue 4, 503-521

Abstract: Bayesian methods are now widely used for analysing radiocarbon dates. We find that the non‐informative priors in use in the literature generate a bias towards wider date ranges which does not in general reflect substantial prior knowledge. We recommend using a prior in which the distribution of the difference between the earliest and latest dates has a uniform distribution. We show how such priors are derived from a simple physical model of the deposition and observation process. We illustrate this in a case‐study, examining the effect that various priors have on the reconstructed dates. Bayes factors are used to help to decide model choice problems.

Date: 2001
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https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9876.00250

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