I used to hate radiocarbon dating until I saw it fix a 30 year old debate

I always thought tree ring dating was more reliable, but a dig in Arizona last month had a site everyone argued was either 1100 or 1300 AD. They ran three charcoal samples and got a tight cluster at 1220 AD, which settled it. Has anyone else had a method they dismissed until a specific result changed their mind?

3 comments

3 Comments

kaiharris2mo agoMost Upvoted

Man, those Arizona sites can be tricky with the stratigraphy. How did they verify the charcoal wasn't from old growth wood, since that can throw off the dates by centuries?

kaiharris1mo agoMost Upvoted

Oh man, stratigraphy out there is a nightmare sometimes, I swear. My own attempt at digging in Arizona I accidentally dated a campfire to like 8000 BC when it was probably from some Boy Scouts last summer. Pure embarrassment. As for the old growth wood thing, I think they did a bunch of cross checking with other organic material from the same layers to see if things matched up. Always feels like you're one misidentified piece of charcoal away from rewriting prehistory in the worst way possible. Have you ever had a dating mix up that made you want to just give up and go study rocks instead?

lewis.troy2mo ago

Yeah that's a good question. Did they mention doing any species ID on the charcoal to rule out slow growing species?