Over the past six decades, archaeological research on anthropogenic deposits in caves and rockshelters throughout Greece has brought to light new evidence regarding their use and has demonstrated that such use was very frequent and, in many cases, continuous from the Paleolithic period to the present day. Thus, in addition to well-preserved stratigraphic records, we now have series of published radiocarbon dates that assist archaeologists and other interested researchers in reassessing older theories concerning the reasons for and duration of their use.
Furthermore, the often-undisturbed stratigraphy of coastal caves has made it possible to calculate the local deviation (ΔR) of the marine reservoir effect ® from the global oceanic model, thereby enabling reliable dating of archaeological finds of marine origin (e.g. mollusk shells). In this study, 14C ages from all these sites across Greece are presented. Their conventional radiocarbon ages span the entire temporal range of applicability of the radiocarbon dating method, i.e. up to 50,000 years before present, and are uniformly calibrated and converted into calendar ages using the latest versions of the international calibration curves, IntCal20 and Marine20.

First Author: Yorgos Facorellis

Keywords:
caves and rockshelters
radiocarbon dating
marine reservoir effect
calibration