Marine Isotope Stages

I must admit that the article I wrote today comes out of my frustration about a piece of jargon that shows up in archaeological literature these days: the practice of referring to marine isotope stages (MIS) and/or oxygen isotope stages (OIS) to describe the date of particular site or event.

Alexandre Duret-Lutz

MIS - OIS is a dating technique, used predominantly in paleontological studies (which include the older end of archaeology), that was developed by a group of paleoclimatologists over the past couple of decades. Basically what these folks have done is create chronology for for our planet based on the rise and fall of ice. MIS holds the promise of assisting us with the challenges ahead of us concerning potential global climate change effects, as a better defines those effects in the past.

• Marine Isotope Stages: what it is and how it works
• what is paleontology, anyway, and how is it different from archaeology?