Synonyms
Archaeointensity dating; Archaeomagnetism; Directional dating; Magnetic dating
Definition
Archaeomagnetism. The study of the magnetic properties of archaeological materials.
Archaeomagnetic dating. The dating of archaeological materials that retain fossilized records of the Earth’s magnetic field by comparing the direction and/or strength of the material’s magnetism with known records of changes in the Earth’s magnetic field through time.
Geomagnetic secular variation. Changes in the strength and direction of the Earth’s magnetic field with periods of a year to millions of years (Merrill et al., 1998); not to be confused with polar reversals, which have periodicities of hundreds of thousands to millions of years.
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Lengyel, S. (2017). Archaeomagnetic Dating. In: Gilbert, A.S. (eds) Encyclopedia of Geoarchaeology. Encyclopedia of Earth Sciences Series. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-4409-0_39
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