Introduction
Radiocarbon (14C) dating is an isotopic or nuclear decay method which can determine an age for once-living organic materials. The technique provides a common chronometric time scale of worldwide applicability on a routine basis in the age range from ~250 to 300 years to between 50,000 and 60,000 years. With isotopic enrichment and larger sample sizes, ages up to 75,000 years have been measured. Also, in some limited situations, ages less than ~250–300 years can be obtained (Taylor 2001; Taylor and Bar-Yosef 2014).
Radiocarbon measurements can be obtained on a wide spectrum of once-living carbon-containing samples including charcoal, wood, marine shell, and bone. For sample sizes of between 1 and 10 g of carbon, conventional decay or beta counting can be employed. Decay counting technology can be employed to measure 14C concentrations by measuring 14C decay events in samples and comparing those count rates with those of known 14C age standards. Accelerator mass...
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Taylor, R.E. (2018). Radiocarbon Dating in Archaeology. In: Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51726-1_325-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51726-1_325-2
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