Evaluation of radiocarbon dates from Tell el-Dab^ca and their approximate position on the calibration curve
Hendrik J. Bruins

Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Jacob Blaustein Institute for Desert Research,
Department Man in the Desert, Sede Boker Campus, 84990, Israel

A detailed evaluation is presented of 16 radiocarbon dates of Tell el-Dab^ca, measured by Dr. Edwin Pak in the late 1980s at the Institut für Radiumforschung und Kernphysik (Universität Wien). Though the dates have a rather large standard deviation of more than 100 radiocarbon years, their respective place in the archaeological stratigraphy of Tell el-Dab^ca enables an assessment of their position on the calibration curve. The important principle for this approach is that successive archaeological layers cannot be synchronous. Therefore, the successive layers cannot have the same position on the calibration curve but must follow each other in time.