Carbon dating mishap changed my whole view on site contamination

I sent a bone sample from my backyard dig off to a lab last month, thinking it was maybe 200 years old. Came back as 11,000 years old, which should have been amazing. But then I realized the creek behind my house had shifted its course at some point, washing in much older material from upstream. The lab tech actually called me and said 'you probably have a mixed deposit there' and that got me thinking about how careful we have to be with context. Has anyone else had a dating result that turned out to be from a secondary deposit?

2 comments

2 Comments

finley7297d ago

Whoa, I actually heard a podcast about a site where water had totally messed with the stratigraphy like that.

king.wyatt7d ago

Eh, depends on the site. Sometimes it's not that big a deal lol.

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