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Obsidian Hydration Dating

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The original use for obsidian, or volcanic glass, was for making chipped stone tools. Archaeologists soon found an incredible use for the tool that has helped us further our knowledge of the past. Obsidian hydration dating was first introduced to the archaeological community by the two geologists, Irving Friedman and Robert Smith, in 1960 (Hughes, 1993). The two ways this method can be used are relative dating and absolute dating. The relative dating method allows you to determine whether an artifact is older or younger than another, while the absolute dating method allows for a calendar date to be produced. Whether the environmental conditions are known determine which method to use. Archaeologists use the degree of hydration observed on the obsidian to help determine when the artifact was created (Hughes, 1993). After obsidian is fractured, atmospheric water diffuses into the glass because it contains around .2 percent water. This produces a water rich hydration rind that increases in depth over time until the fresh obsidian surface contains around 3.5 percent water. They then measure the thickness of the rind in petrographic thin sections cut normal to the surface using a microscope. The dehydrated zone of the rind has different optical properties than the rinds of hydration. By determining the degree of hydration, archaeologists can determine how long ago the tool was created if they possess two other pieces of information. The three factors needed to …show more content…

They compared 230 obsidian hydration readings from thirty individual site components with independent age estimates based on temporally diagnostic artifacts and radiocarbon dates. In this study, they found that obsidian hydration dating is a very accurate tool for determining the age of an object. The hydration age estimates were an average of fifteen percent within the radiocarbon

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