Re: Clams before Columbus

Peter Alaca wrote:

t(nospam)kavanagh" <"tkavanag wrote:
ds12na$ncd$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx,

Peter Alaca wrote:

t(nospam)kavanagh" <"tkavanag wrote:
ds10gt$mpp$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx,

Alan Crozier wrote:

In my review of Nielsen/Scott on the Kensington Rune Stone I
criticized the absence of references for certain claims. One of
the claims concerned clams. I asked "Where are the clams from
Klagen [Skagen?] in north Jutland that must have come with ships
from New England in the 13th and 14th centuries?"

Richard Nielsen has now kindly provided an Internet source with
a reference to something published in Nature 1992:
http://www.science-frontiers.com/sf085/sf085a01.htm

(I note that my suspicion was right about the correct form of
the place-name: it is indeed Skagen/the Skaw at the northern tip
of Jutland. See
http://www.vulkaner.no/t/skagen/skagen1-n.html)

Come on folks, we went thru this before, thanks to Yuri, back in
1998:

Quote from the thread:

shells indicate Nordic-American links
42. "tkavanag<no spam>" <"tkavanag Mar 19 1998, 3:00 am

Newsgroups: sci.archaeology
Date: 1998/03/19
Subject: Re: shells indicate Nordic-American links

OK, folks, here it is:

K.S. Peterson, K.L. Rasmussen, J. Heinemeir, N. Rud
1992 Clams Before Columbus. Nature. Vol. 359, p 679.

...We have dated a sample from the Kattegat region on the east coast
of the Skaw in northern Jutland, Denmark. ...

We took three samples from the east coast of the Skaw, ... with
fragments of M. arenaria. ... The conventional radio-carbon dating
of the three samples ... showed calibrated ages in the range of ad
1400-1650... We subsequently radio-carbon dated one M. arenaria
specimen from each of the three samples by accelerator mass
spectrometry ... The age of the AMS sample found in the sand barrier
farthest from the coast (... AD 1245-1295 +/- 1 SD)... It is obvious
from the distribution that there is a very slight probability of the
sample being younger than Columbus's discovery...

Note that indeed, we are talking about a date from the fragment of
ONE shell found in a sand dune, with no archaeological context.
Moreover, the authors suggest that it might even be younger than
Columbus.

/endquote/

ONE SHELL.

tk

Thanks for the quote and the 1998 ref, where is more.
btw. Joe Pinegar cited the article

That's where I got the original reference that I went to see.

ONE SHELL

Must have come from mother superior's kitchen garden.

The larger question is that besides being a computer expert, who can't
seem to get around upgrading her own computer, a scholar who won't
organize her own files, a going-on 40-year expert on CO2 (who has read
everything on CO2 written in the past 40 years), she is also an expert
on Chesapeake soft-shell clams ("the other side of the Delaware
peninsula"), whose only documented occurrence in the northlands seems to
be fragments on one beach in Denmark, such that she is able to identify
a shell fragment in an undated, and probably undatable, abandoned
nunnery's garden.

That sure is convincing evidence, by gum.

tk
Ales Hrdlicka take note
.