RADIOCARBON CALIBRATION AND ANALYSIS OF STRATIGRAPHY - THE OXCAL PROGRAM

People usually study the chronologies of archaeological sites and geol ogical sequences using many different kinds of evidence, taking into a ccount calibrated radiocarbon dates, other dating methods and stratigr aphic information. Many individual case studies demonstrate the value of using statistical methods to combine these different types of infor mation. I have developed a computer program, OxCal, running under Wind ows 3.1 (for IBM PCs), that will perform both C-14 calibration and cal culate what extra information can be gained from stratigraphic evidenc e. The program can perform automatic wiggle matches and calculate prob ability distributions for samples in sequences and phases. The program is written in C++ and uses Bayesian statistics and Gibbs sampling for the calculations. The program is very easy to use, both for simple ca libration and complex site analysis, and will produce graphical output from virtually any printer.