Relative And Absolute Dating Techniques Are Necessary To Find The Most Accurate Date Of An Archaeological Site

Relative and absolute dating techniques are necessary to find the most accurate date of an object found or archaeological site, with both techniques providing invaluable information in different forms, with varying levels of effectiveness based on the find or site being dated. Relative dating is defined as “the arrangement of artefacts or events in a sequence relative to one another but without ties calendrically measured time” (Lexicon, 2014). This means that there is no physical date to the objects, but it insinuates whether it is older or more modern than other objects within the deposit or site. Absolute dating is therefore the opposite to this, providing an exact date or range of dates that the object could have been deposited in or created,

This is most commonly seen in jewellery or pottery, with different gods becoming more prominent at ages or different styles of jewellery or clothing becoming more common as style changes. Doing this for all styles of a certain artefact you can build up a table of percentages and eventually a range of “battle ship curves” (Nyx, 2013), and use that to detect patterns of change or stability in patterns. Using this you will also find that the styles of items have a distinct pattern of frequency in that there will be a gradual increase in frequency as it first comes into style, then a period of maximum use where the highest frequency is and then a gradual decline in use as the frequency of another style rises. This method allows for artefacts in archaeological sites across the world to be relatively dated using these curves as a kind of global average of when styles were common in different areas. This method’s true potential is demonstrated even more when matched with artefacts that provide a beginning and end to the relative dating. An example of this is coins, often with a date that it was minted, providing a “Terminus post quem” meaning that any other artefacts in that site must be dated after that minting date, meaning that a style can be relatively

Radiocarbon dating involves knowing that carbon 14 is a radioactive isotope and has a half-life of 5730 years. The concept involves all living organisms containing carbon 14 through radiation entering the atmosphere and taking a proton away from nitrogen 14 to produce carbon 14, flora then takes in the carbon 14 in the form of carbon dioxide for photosynthesis. Fauna then eat this carbon 14 that has been synthesised in the plants, and eventually the carbon 14 decays back into nitrogen 14 and the cycle begins again. Because of this carbon is found in all living organisms and this is a key concept for the idea of carbon dating, from this you can measure the amount of carbon 14 in a specimen by using an accelerated mass spectrometer to measure the speed at which the isotopes are moving and therefore their weight and then create a percentage of the specimen that is carbon 14 to finally create a calibration curve converting radiocarbon estimates into a calendar date. An example of this being used effectively is in a different context to the relative dating methods, it has been used to give an absolute date for the collagen in the bones of Anglo-Saxon remains, analysing 76 adult skeletons from various different sites, to confirm the previously established chronology of the bones as well as use this information in a study on the diet of Anglo-Saxons over that time period, showing that radiocarbon dating is