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The EIRA Database: Glacial to Holocene Radiocarbon Ages from Easter Island's Sedimentary Records

Journal article published in 2016 by Valentí Rull ORCID
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.

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Abstract

Consistent chronologies based on reliable age-depth models are essential for paleoclimatic and paleoecological reconstruction. In Easter Island’s Late Pleistocene to Holocene sedimentary records, chronological consistency has often been disrupted by the occurrence of sedimentary gaps and age inversions. However, the number of coherent chronostratigraphic records has increased during the last decade with the intensification of coring efforts and the development of new numerical methods for age-depth modeling. The progress towards more robust chronologies for the island would benefit from the thorough consideration of all the available radiocarbon datasets and the use of new modeling methods and their potential future developments. In order to facilitate initiatives of this type, this paper provides a thorough database called EIRA (Easter Island Radiocarbon Ages) containing all the radiocarbon dates from lake sediments and peats of Easter Island published to date (1984-2015). The total number of ages is 279, ranging from ca. 48,000 to ca. 170 cal yr BP (calibrated years before the present, where the present is defined as AD 1950). The EIRA dataset is freely available at the NOAA International Climatic Data Center, section Paleoclimate (https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/study/19805) and will be updated yearly. It is hoped that novel statistical analyses of the EIRA database and its further updates will contribute to the improvement of island chronostratigraphic framework and, as a consequence, to the enhancement of paleoecological and paleoclimatic knowledge.