Methodological approaches to determining the marine radiocarbon reservoir effect

The marine radiocarbon reservoir effect is an offset in C-14 age between contemporaneous organisms from the terrestrial environment and organisms that derive their carbon from the marine environment. Quantification of this effect is of crucial importance for correct calibration of the C-14 ages of marine-influenced samples to the calendrical timescale. This is fundamental to the construction of archaeological and palaeoenvironmental chronologies when such samples are employed in C-14 analysis. Quantitative measurements of temporal variations in regional marine reservoir ages also have the potential to be used as a measure of process changes within Earth surface systems, due to their link with climatic and oceanic changes. The various approaches to quantification of the marine radiocarbon reservoir effect are assessed, focusing particularly on the North Atlantic Ocean. Currently, the global average marine reservoir age of surface waters, R(t), is c. 400 radiocarbon years; however, regional values deviate from this as a function of climate and oceanic circulation systems. These local deviations from R(t) are expressed as Delta R values. Hence, polar waters exhibit greater reservoir ages (Delta R = c. +400 to +800 C-14 y) than equatorial waters (Delta R = c. 0 C-14 y). Observed temporal variations in Delta R appear to reflect climatic and oceanographic changes. We assess three approaches to quantification of marine reservoir effects using known age samples (from museum collections), tephra isochrones (present onshore/offshore) and paired marine/terrestrial samples (from the same context in, for example, archaeological sites). The strengths and limitations of these approaches are evaluated using examples from the North Atlantic region. It is proposed that, with a suitable protocol, accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) measurements on paired, short-lived, single entity marine and terrestrial samples from archaeological deposits is the most promising approach to constraining changes over at least the last 5 ky BP.