CalPal Edition 2025.5
Description
CalPal is scientific freeware for 14C-based chronological research for Holocene and Palaeolithic Archaeology.
Programming language is Fortran 95. Operating system is Windows. CalPal has a standard Graphic User Interface (GUI) that makes extensive use of the Winteracter Fortran-language toolset which also supports 14C-database management and chronological screen measurements. The IMSL-Libraries are used for mathematical and statistical data processing.
Author: Bernie Weninger (University Cologne)
CalPal software download (zipped exe; 332 MB, expands to 484 MB).
History of CalPal 1986-2025 Edition 2025_5 (pdf; 1.15 MB)
CalPal installation guide edition 2024_6 (pdf; 90 kB )
CalCurveComparisons_2020 (pdf; 1.1 MB)
Abstract
Installation: Download CalPal_A_Edition_2025_5.exe and unzip to a directory of your choice (e.g. ‘c:\test1’).The installation runs via double click on ‘Setup_Calpal.exe’.
General Description: CalPal supports the cultural and palaeoclimatological analysis of chronological data from 'mixed' dating methods/sources. The analysis allows both automated inter-method (e.g. 14C, Dendro, Historical, OSL,TL), as well as automated intra-source switching (14C: N-S Hemisphere, Marine & Reservoir Corrections) of the input ages. This approach eliminates the focus and accompanying research bias, as well as given limitations in dating periods, and often also the clearly observable restrictions in dating precision and accuracy, that are so typically associated with archaeological chronologies that are only based on 14C-dates. The necessary (quality-control) test-results of such multi-method applications (call it: Calibration Curve Switching: CCS) for the different CalPal-dialogs are provided in the file 'CalPal CCS Interdialog Comparisons.pdf'. Numeric calibation curve comparisons (ranging from IntCal04 through Fairbanks 2005; CalPal-Hulu-2007; IntCal09; IntCal13; up to IntCal20), both for CalPal and for other 14C-age calibration programs, are provided in the file named 'CalCurveComparisons_2020.pdf'. The CalPal Database (Excel) now contains a total of 201660 dates (for 10 ‘Continents=Excel Spreadsheets)’, 207 countries, 32222 sites), with 98% georef.
The Main Amendments in CalPal Edition 2025.5 are:
New Pottery Seriation Projects (based on Correspondence Analysis):
- Late Antique: Elusa (Israel). Data by Daniel Fuks, Yotam Tepper, Tali Erickson-Gini, Dafna Langgut, Lior Weissbrod, & Ehud Weiss.
- Early Iron Age: Sindos (North Greece). Data by Stefanos Gimatzidis.
- Early Iron Age: Tel Rehov & Beth Shean (Israel). Data by Amihai Mazar & Nava Panitz-Cohen.
2. Climate Library: N=584 records
3. Miyake & Solar Excursion Library: N=17 records
4. Archaeological Project Library: Palaeogenetics/Diseases N=49 papers (14 Treeview branches)
5. Mediterranean Iron Age Project Library N=49 papers (5 Treeview branches)
Files
CalCurveComparisons_2020.pdf
Additional details
Software
- Programming language
- Fortran