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- Lab number
- Beta-83111
- Material dated
- charcoal; charbon de bois
- Locality
- near base of Point Roberts Upland, 3 m asl, Delta Municipality, Fraser Delta, British Columbia
- Map sheet
- 92 G/03
- Date submitted
- May 1, 0098
- Date uploaded
- February 14, 2020
- Normalized Age
- 3470 ± 60
- Significance
- St. Mungo / Locarno Beach
- Context
- Feature 6-1, basal date for Block I midden
- Comments
- DgRs-1, Beach Grove: The site is a shell midden with depressions that mark former house locations (Ham, 1981: Fig. 4). Brolly (1997) notes that no fewer than 10 excavations have taken place here between 1956 and 1995, and he lists 15 dates from the Beta lab. Other radiocarbon samples were analyzed over a number of years as work at the site proceeded, and published comments have reflected changing views. Both Borden and Duff agree that the University of Washington (UW-43, UW-44) and GSC (GSC-440) dates indicate that the Marpole phase lasted considerably longer than had been expected, and Duff questioned whether the maximum age of the phase were greater than perhaps 2400 years. The Gakushuin dates (GaK-1478, GaK-1479), according to Borden, tend to confirm earlier suspicions that Beach Grove is multicomponent. GaK-1478 very likely related to occasional use of the locality by Locarno Beach phase groups near the end of that phase, an assumption which is supported by the presence of characteristic Locarno Beach ground slate projectiles in beach sand from which the sample originated. Dates from the overlying village deposit suggest that Marpole phase settlement was not established here until a few centuries later. GaK-1479 falls well within the time of the Stselax phase, the last of the Fraser Delta sequence, beginning about AD 1250. Burial 9 is intrusive into these deposits and thus probably dates to late in the Stselex phase and may even be protohistoric. No comments are available for the other dates, and most of the excavation reports remain unpublished. Although the portion of the site with house platforms is said to be a single component of the Marpole phase (Matson and Coupland, 1995: 208), many of the dates have not been specifically attributed to a cultural phase in the published literature.