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Users in the Quaternary and Archaeological Sciences have expressed a general desire for significant improvements in the accuracy and precision of radiocarbon dating results in general but also allied to the measurement of small samples. The accuracy and precision of measurement has also been the focus of some attention within the C-14 community. As a result, the C-14 community has undertaken a wide-scale, far-reaching and evolving programme of inter-comparisons, to the benefit of laboratories and users alike. the most recent being completed in 2001. The information arising from the studies is important for the appropriate interpretation of the scientific evidence provided by C-14 analyses in calibration and construction of chronologies where assemblages of dates are frequently assessed.In this paper, some preliminary findings from the Fourth International Radiocarbon Inter-comparison, completed in 2001, will be reviewed and some conclusions drawn with regard to accuracy and precision of C-14 dates. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

This paper presents the first chronometric dates for sediments that contain a Mousterian industry in Dalmatia (south Croatia). Electron spin resonance (ESR) dating was conducted on two teeth from the Mousterian level E1 at the site of Mujina Pecina. Additionally five bone and one charcoal sample from five different strata of origin at this site were dated by accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS). Assuming 30% moisture for both the gamma and beta dose rate calculations, the mean LU ESR age estimate is 44 +/- 5 ka for level E1, which is statistically indistinguishable from the mean EU ESR age estimate of 40 +/- 7 ka. A single, uncalibrated C-14 age from the E1/E2 interface yielded an age estimate of 45,170 + 2780/ - 2060 years BP while the mean of the five samples from overlying Mousterian levels is 39 +/- ka. The true (calibrated) age of this mean is about 42 ka, which means that the entire stratigraphic profile in Mujina Pecina apparently was very rapidly deposited, and that the ESR age, regardless of uptake model is in good agreement with the calibrated C-14 mean age. Temporally, Mujina Pecina overlaps with Pontinian Mousterian sites in west-central Italy and Vindija level G3 from northwestern Croatia. However, there are notable differences between the Mousterian industry from Mujina Pecina and these other sites. Collectively, the Croatian sites yield important evidence on the adaptation of European Mousterian people.