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A Progress Report on the Dating of Archaeological Sites by Means of Radioactive Elements

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 January 2017

Robert S. Merrill
Robert S. Merrill*
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois
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Extract

The importance of being able to date accurately the remains of past societies has long been recognized by archaeologists. The problem has always been to find methods that work in the absence of historical records. Recent developments, such as tree-ring dating, have been great contributions, but they are not applicable everywhere. There is still a great need for new methods to supplement and extend the range of present dating procedures.

A large field of knowledge so far largely unexplored for possible dating methods is the physics and chemistry of archaeological remains. One area in this field is the study of naturally occurring radioactive elements. Some of these elements have been used by geologists to date ancient rock strata, but applications to archaeological materials have not been made. Recently, however, two possible methods for using radioactive elements to date archaeological remains have been proposed on theoretical grounds. It is not yet definitely known whether they will work, or how well. Further research is necessary.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Antiquity , Volume 13 , Issue 4Part1 , April 1948 , pp. 281 - 286
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for American Archaeology 1948

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References

1 The value of a measurable property is the number obtained when the property is measured.

2 Libby, W. F., The Physical Review, Vol. 69, p. 671, 1946 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Anderson, E. C., et al., “Radiocarbon from Cosmic Radiation,” Science, Vol. 105, p. 576, 1947 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

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8 Readers interested in the technical details of the C14 method are referred to the following report published after this one was prepared: Anderson, E. C., Libby, W. F., et al., The Physical Review, Vol. 72, pp. 931-6, 1947 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.