Biblical Archaeology: Dating Techniques

As our civilization grows, at that place is also a growing offense for k todayledge of the noncurrent. Archaeology is fast befitting one of the popular skills. Most archeological finds argon composed of shreds of pottery or c durationmics. As archeology and modern apprehension mastergress m both dating techniques argon beingness developed to be utilize on these fragile artifacts in rear to give us a legal brief glimpse of our past. Many techniques are right off available which allow the detailed bodily and chemical characterization of ceramic artifacts.Given a suitable archaeological ingest it is now possible to determine many aspects of technology, provenance, and, in ab kayoed cases, its go for. Several dating techniques utilize in archeology are superposition, artifacts of cognise age, stratigraphy, dendrochronology and thermoluminescence. This paper shall focus on on ceramic Analysis use three of these techniques Dendrochronology, radio carbon copy dating and Thermoluminescence. Carbon 14 carbon 14 dating or Carbon-14 dating is the aim of the approximate age of an ancient object, much(prenominal) as an archaeological specimen, by touchstone the total of carbon 14 it contains. radiocarbon dating was discoered by a group of scientists led by Prof. Willard Libby of the University of Chicago after World War II. Since plants and puppets take up carbon-14 du name their life sequence. The amount of carbon-14 in them exists in remainder with the C14 concent proportionalityn of the cash dispenser and the ratio of C-14 to C-12 corpse about the same as the ratio in the atmosphere. As soon as a plant or animal dies, they cease the metabolic function of carbon uptake there is no replenishment of hot carbon, however decay.This rate of decay was calculated by Libbys squad to be 5568 age per half(prenominal)-life, this operator that half the C14 in the original sample allow for prolong decayed after 5568 course of studys and aft er anformer(a) 5568 course of studys, half of that rest solid will throw decayed, and so on. This rate of decay is what is now hold out as Libbys half-life which he measured at 556830 age. The neat advantage of the radiocarbon mode is its electrical capacity to be uniformly applied throughout the world , this is probably the primary yard why it is one of the most astray utilise and vanquish-known absolute dating manners.However, it is non without its flaws, radiocarbon dating has the following limitations 1. that after 10 half-lives there is a in truth small amount of radioactive carbon present in a sample, at about 50,000-60,000 eld radiocarbon dating becomes inaccurate. 2. the ratio of C-14 to C-12 in the atmosphere is not constant. This divergence is due to changes in the intensity of the cosmic light beam shelling of the Earth, the 1950s nuclear testing and the depletion of the Ozone layer.3. in spunky-minded cases, a reservoir notion will give C-14 terms that are a lot older than the true age of the sample because some plants and animals live in very unusual environments whose C-14 content is much light than normal. 4. Contamination of the sample also limits the true statement of Radiocarbon dating as when poriferous samples contain recently surviving material with a full charge of C-14. Finally, Radiocarbon dating bottom only be used on living organisms. DendrochronologyDendrochronology is the science that uses head dodges dated to their detailed year of formation to analyze blase and spatial patterns of processes in the physical and ethnical sciences. Its main function in archaeology is to use manoeuver ring to date when forest was felled, transported, processed, or used for turn of events or toneen artefacts such as a beam or game of an ancient structure. The principle lav development maneuver-ring is that tree-ring sequences from trees that grow in a seasonal climate, i. e., with one developing increment per year, with the sizing of that harvest-home dependent upon some climatic stimulus such as shabby in the Polar shares, drought in the Aegean, and various combinations of the two stimuli in regions in between, asshole be compared so that these increments, to a greater extent popularly known as rings, push aside be dated to the calendar year in which they were formed. Aside from the principle of victimisation tree-rings, the use of Dendrochronology is governed by several former(a) principles, these set of scientific rules must be adhered to in order for the result to be flawless.There is the Uniformitarian Principle which states that physical and biological processes that physical contact current environmental processes with current patterns of tree growth must have been in operation in the past, the Principle of moderate Factors which states that rates of plant processes are cumber by the primary environmental shifting that is most limiting, The Principle of Aggregate t ree diagram Growth which states that any individual tree-growth serial publication faecal matter be decomposed into an aggregate of environmental factors, both man and infixed, that affected the patterns of tree growth over sequence, The Principle of ecologic Amplitude stating that a specie of trees whitethorn grow and reproduce over a received range of habitats, referred to as its ecological amplitude, the Principle of Sites Selection which states that hat sites multipurpose to dendrochronology fecal matter be identified and selected establish on criteria that will produce tree-ring serial sensitive to the environmental variable being examined, the Principle of Cross-dating which states that matching patterns in ring widths or different ring characteristics (such as ring density patterns) among several tree-ring series allow the identification of the exact year in which severally tree ring was formed. and the Principle of Replication which states that the environment al omen being investigated give the sack be maximized, and the amount of noise minimized, by sampling much than one stem radius per tree, and more than than one tree per site, the application of which is not limited to Dendrochronology only.The methodology used in Dendrochronology is cross-dating, or matching patterns of ring-growth from one tree to another and assigning rings to item years, however, this possible only among trees growing in the same general climatic region. The rise up-grounded thing about dendrochronology on the other hand, is that cross-dating can sometimes be achieved in spite of human interference to ring-growth such as thinning of stands, resin-gathering, fire harm, and other traumas such as severe put up effects, pollution or lightning damage, not to parent shaping of the wood at the time of construction and decay afterward. Furthermore, visual and statistical techniques are employed to guarantee the accuracy of the matches and in addition to simpl e ring-width analysis, roentgenogram densitometric methods are used to reconstruct past environmental conditions.It is also possible that wood or charcoal samples interpreted from rest buildings or excavated from archaeological sites be crossdated with each(prenominal) other and with wood from living trees to run short the tree-ring chronology beyond the date of the oldest ring of the oldest living tree in the region. Scientists believe that the best advantage of dendrochronology is that it is the only archaeometric technique where intent of absolute dates accurate to the year is either theoretically or practically possible, but, honest like any other method of dating artefacts, it suffers from several limitations. The following limits the use or accuracy of Dendrochronology 1. in some subject fields of the world, peculiarly in the tropics, the species available do not have sufficiently unequivocal seasonal patterns that can be used 2.in cases where the right species are a vailable, the wood must be well enough maintain that the rings are readable to the top that there must be at least 30 intact rings on any one sample. 3. in order to produce an accurate result, it is inevitable to have samples of flavour that retained their bark, so that it is clear which ring was the outermost when it was felled. 4. it can only be used if there is an existing master strip for that area and species if the only master chronology available for the region is oak, cross-matching with timbers of these other species cannot be relied on. 5. use of this technique is also limited on how faraway back in the past things can be dated with tree rings although bristle cone pine trees can live to 9,000 years, this is a very rare phenomenon. 6.sapwood is highly susceptible to decay particularly by beetle larvae and as a result all sapwood may have been removed from the accessible surfaces of timbers during building repairs and preservation work, making it impossible to determ ine when the timber was felled. 7. it may give inaccurate results on the actual date of the structure if it so happens that the date the timber was felled is not inescapably the date that the building was constructed or that the timber used was imported from another area. 8. in some places, prehistoric people may have built their structures using timber however, in most of the world that did not begin to happen until about 4,000 to 5,000 years ago.Thermoluminiscence Thermoluminescence dating is the determination by means of measuring the accumulated beam of light sickness venereal infection of the time elapsed since the material containing sheer minerals was either heated or capable to sunlight. The application ranges from Lower Paleolithic to neolithic archaeological sites, with a major focus on the Middle Paleolithic, which is often beyond the range of the radiocarbon method. The principle behind this unique dating technique is base on the storage of information about the absorbed radiation in inorganic crystals. It is based on structural damage and faults to the crystal lattice of minerals by ionizing radiation.The sources for this present radiation are radioactive nuclides from the skirt sediment and from the sample itself, as well as secondary cosmic rays. olibanum a radiation loony toons accumulates in the crystal in the form of electrons in excited states, of which some are metastable and thus resident over periods of time long enough to allow a dating application. During the first heating of the artefact, if the temperature is high enough (400 C), the drainage is sufficient to unwind all electrons relevant to the luminescence method used that is, the clock is set to vigour and through the years it starts to accumulate natural radiation, upon its second heating it releases all this stored radiation in terms of thermoluminescent light.The released light is indeed correlated to the absorbed radiation which is whence correlated to the arch eological age. In practice, companionship of the composition of the artefact is of importance since the personality or chemical composition of it, as explained above, determines the amount of natural radioisotopes present in it. These natural radioisotopes are responsible for the greater part of the radiation that is absorbed. If the composition of the artefact is known, then the archeological age of the artefact can be computed by using the total amount of absorbed radiation divided by the absorbed dose through internal and external radiation per year. The greatest advantage of Thermoluminescence dating over other methods is not only the occupy association of the event with past human activity on a running(a) time scale, but also its little vulnerability to unknown variation of certain parameters. However, Thermoluminescence dating is still prone to errors and inaccuracies. The military rank and publishing of results must be make with due care and must get wind with certain standards which includes the presentation of glow curves, heating- and DE-plateaus, growth curve(s) and the determination of the alpha sensitivity of each sample. Also, equal care has to be taken in the evaluation of parameters prone to variation with time. ConclusionEach of the three dating techniques discussed has its own peculiar way of finding the archaeological era that a sample was created or may have died Radiocarbon depends on decay, Dendrochronology depends upon growth and thermoluminescence depends upon absorption. The three techniques however different they may be are still affiliated by a linear timeline, when the accuracy of one technique ends, another begins. Dendrochronology can only be used as long as there are master strips which may reach only up to a maximum of 9,000 years old, results obtained through Radiocarbon, on the other hand, can only be accurate up to 50,000-60,000 years old while Thermoluminescence dating ranges from 10,000 to 230,000 years old. The th ree dating techniques discussed have their own advantages and disadvantages.In the end, the scientist is the one who weighs all the pros and the cons of any technique and he is given the apprehension on what technique to use which he thinks is more appropriate and shall give out more accurate findings. BIBLIOGRAPHY Berger, Thomas. Thermoluminescence date A Brief Overview. http//www. ati. ac. at/vanaweb/papers/archview. pdf Fagan, Brian M. and George H. Michaels. dating Techniques in Archaeology. http//www. mc. maricopa. edu/dept/d10/asb/anthro2003/archy/dating/datingtech. hypertext mark-up languageDendrochronology Freestone, Ian. ceramic Analysis. http//ads. ahds. ac. uk/catalogue/adsdata/cbaoccpap/pdf/117/11710001. pdf Grissino-Mayer, Henri D. Principles of Dendrochronology. http//web. utk. edu/grissino/principles. htm Higham, Thomas. 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