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Lab number
TO-1097
Material dated
plant remains; restes de plantes
Taxa dated
Cyperaceae (25 seeds, 0.025 g)
Locality
north edge of Chin Coulee, 50 km south-southeast of Taber, Alberta
Map sheet
72 E/12
Submitter
J.R. Vickers
Date submitted
January 5, 0098
Normalized Age
9380 ± 110
Significance
geoarchaeology; géoarchéologie
Stratigraphic component
1988 test
Context
1988 test unit, 286 cm depth, in silty clay with plant macrofossils, about 36 cm below the base of the bison bone bed
Comments
DjOw-1, Fletcher: This Cody complex bison kill site was discovered 1963 by Armin Dyck after Mr. Fletcher had dug a borrow pit in which to water his cattle. Possibly due to the influence of cattle urine and excrement, the site has been extraordinally difficult to date by radiocarbon. The bones submitted for dating were somewhat permineralized, with manganese enrichment subsequently being demonstrated by neutron activation analysis (Wilson, et al. 1991: 130). Furthermore, the method of collagen extraction in use at the time employed the insoluble concentrate for radiocarbon dating, and this method was subsequently abandoned when it was realized that potential contaminants might remain in the samples at variable concentrations. The Fletcher site was restudied in 1987 and 1988, during which a sample of sedge seeds was isolated from silty clay that underlies the bone bed. An accelerator mass spectrometry date on the seeds appears to provide an acceptable limiting date on the age of the bison kill.

References