Chronological uncertainty severely complicates the identification of cyclical processes in radiocarbon-dated time-series

Cycles are widely considered to be an important feature of environmental and human history over the last 50,000 years. However, there is an overlooked problem in the investigation of cyclicity in this time period—the standard statistical methods for identifying cycles assume that observations are precisely dated, but the main relevant dating technique, radiocarbon dating, often yields dates with large and highly irregular uncertainties. Here, we...