Are Phytolith Radiocarbon Dates Reliable?
Christine A. Prior, Rafter Radiocarbon Lab, Institute of Geological & Nuclear Sciences, 30 Gracefield Road, Lower Hutt, New Zealand, John Carter, School of Earth Sciences, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand, and Uwe Rieser, Luminescence Dating Laboratory, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand. Phytoliths are microscopic opaline particles commonly found in soils and sediments. They are produced in many living plant cells as the cell fills with silica, forming a solid body. Fragments of the original cellular material are trapped inside the phytolith, which is highly resistant to decomposition. Because phytoliths exist as stable entities in sediments for long periods of time, morphological analysis is used to reconstruct vegetational histories. More recently, isotopic studies of oxygen and carbon in phytoliths have been used in paleoenvironmental reconstruction. Various studies have suggested that the organic carbon trapped inside phytoliths is
