3 ms·
It's actually a very common class of techniques. Carbon-14 dating relies on the ratios of carbon atoms, and is widely used for dating younger stuff. However, it
by muricula 3y ago
It's actually a very common class of techniques. Carbon-14 dating relies on the ratios of carbon atoms, and is widely used for dating younger stuff. However, its relatively short half life means that for older stuff archeologists need to rely on other elements rarely found in organic materials like the uranium-lead decay path or in this case strontium.
- AlotOfReading 3y agoCarbon dating is good up to 50kya, i.e. anything an archeologist is likely to be involved with. There's a separate issue dating things around 2500 BP called the Hallstatt plateau, but the slave trade this paper is looking at happened more recently than either of these (400 BP max). The problem is that carbon dating doesn't give you very good localization because it's generated by atmospheric sources. Strontium is almost exclusively of geological origin and the ratio varies a lot, so you can build a good map with it.