The Benefits of Using Radiocarbon Dating and an Interdisciplinary Approach for Identifying Contamination of Archaeological Find Assemblages. A Case Study from the Multi-period Settlement Site at Rakovice, Czech Republic
Abstract
The contamination of archaeological find assemblages at multi-period (and other) sites can sometimes go undetected. In this article we seek to highlight this problem through analysis of the fill of settlement features from a site at Rakovice, South Bohemia, Czech Republic.
After a detailed spatial evaluation of different categories of finds, an analysis of plant macroremains, and radiocarbon dating, what had originally appeared to be a clear-cut archaeological situation of the superposition of two features from the Roman and Early Mediaeval periods was shown to be much more complex. This discovery confirmed the value of a multi-disciplinary approach and especially of radiocarbon dating even in apparently simple contexts.
What we are especially concerned about is the risk of assigning particular periods to multi-period sites that have been insufficiently radiocarbon dated.