Archaeologist turned embedded dev here. It's not limited to software. But dating is one of the things we understand very well. The key is an immense, globally c

Archaeologist turned embedded dev here. It's not limited to software. But dating is one of the things we understand very well. The key is an immense, globally consistent data set collected by thousands of idiots (like me) who trekked to the ends of the earth for a sample or two. That data came from dozens of sources (soils, charcoal deposits, rocks, lake cores, tree cores, ice cores, bones, literature, oral histories, artifacts, etc), each with their formation processes and interpretive challenges. In some cases (such as radio- or thermo- dating), the process depends primarily on fundamental physical processes. If these models are wrong, We got incredibly lucky building computers and space probes on the same concepts. But we can compare cross-check that data with processes observable today (like erosion, sedimentation, dendrochronology, cores... etc). Those data sets are globally consistent. But, we can go a step further and cross-check both of them with ab initio computer models and human sources with all the context that implies. As expected, they pretty much all work out. Virtually every area of science has contributed to the modern understanding of dating. If something is fundamentally wrong in that understanding, it would be exciting to put it mildly. And yes, there are issues as well. I could go on for hours about them. But archaeology is both an old field and a highly self-critical one. Any idea that's survived awhile is probably either "close", wrong in some very subtle ways, or extraordinarily attractive to our particular, western academia.