Stopped using carbon dating as the gold standard after the Shanidar cave mix-up

I used to trust carbon-14 results without question, but after that 2022 re-dating of the Neanderthal burial site in Shanidar cave that shifted the timeline by 4,000 years, I stopped relying on a single method. Now I always cross-check with luminescence or stratigraphy before accepting a date. The pollen samples there showed the body was laid on flowers, but the carbon date threw everyone off for a decade. Has anyone else had a site where one dating method completely misled the interpretation?

2 comments

2 Comments

allen.ivan26d ago

That Shanidar mess is why I stopped trusting radiocarbon after the Jericho grain fiasco.

hunt.quinn26d ago

The pollen thing at Shanidar actually got looked at again more recently too (around 2019 or so). Turns out those flower deposits might have been from burrowing rodents or wind, not a deliberate burial ritual. So the whole "Neanderthals buried their dead with flowers" story was already shaky before the carbon dating got corrected. I get being mad about the Jericho grain dates (those were a mess too), but carbon dating is still really useful if you know its limits. It just can't handle old samples with lots of contamination, which is why you always need to check against stratigraphy like you said.