AMS dating of early shellmounds of the southeastern Brazilian coast

Abstract

This paper discusses the chronology of prehistoric settlements of the central-south Brazilian coast. A charcoal sample from a coastal shellmound of Rio de Janeiro State was dated by 14C-AMS to 7,860 ± 80 years BP as part of an interdisciplinary project between physicists and archaeologists. This is an unexpected result that reinforces two similar previous early dates for the same region, which were questioned by Brazilian archaeologists because they implied in pulling back by some two thousand years the antiquity consensually accepted for the settlement of that region.