Review of the 10th Radiocarbon & Archaeology Conference (Zürich, 11-14th September). T. Higham
The 10th Radiocarbon and Archaeology conference was held at the ETH Zürich (Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich), in parallel with the 24th Radiocarbon conference. The meeting got underway on Sunday 11/09, with a series of workshops at the Hönggerberg ETH campus, covering topics such as the Carbon cycle, compound-specific radiocarbon dating, mortar dating and also included lab tours of the ETH facilities. This was followed by an ice-breaker event. The remainder of the conference was held at the main ETH building in central Zurich. Following a welcome from the Rector of the ETH, Prof. Dissertori, Alex Bayliss began the conference by giving an overview of the radiocarbon dating of historic sites in the age of single-year calibration, providing a measure of how far the field of radiocarbon dating and archaeology has come in terms of precision and interdisciplinarity, with dendrochronology and genetics now complementing AMS dating. Aside from two other plenary talks, the remainder of the Archaeology part of the conference was split into two parallel sessions, covering the topics of agriculture/migration/DNA, diet and reservoir effects, archaeological samples for accurate dating, dating at the limit of the method, geoarchaeology, art and cultural heritage and radiocarbon and the protection of cultural heritage. The parallel sessions of the Radiocarbon conference focussed on technical developments and the carbon cycle. As in…