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Radiocarbon Dating
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Radiocarbon Dating is the measurement of the age of dead matter by comparing the radiocarbon content with that in living matter. The method was discovered at the University of Chicago in the 1940s, but further research had to wait until the end of World War II. Radiocarbon, or radioactive carbon (C-14), is produced by the cosmic rays in the atmosphere and is assimilated only by living beings. At death, the assimilation process stops. Living matter, wherever found on earth, always has the same ratio of radioactive carbon to ordinary carbon. This ratio is enough to be measured by sensitive instruments to about 1 percent accuracy.
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It is nearly fifty years now since Willard Libby's concept of Radiocarbon Dating spread like wildfire and captured the imagination of every archaeologist and Quaternary geologist world-wide. It was the 'brave new world', 'the new frontier', and every other clichZˇ one can think of - so if one word could be used to describe it, it would be 'excitement'. It promised to create an absolute chronology where speculation had been rife; it promised to vindicate imaginative theories and their champions; and it threatened the cherished beliefs of distinguished authorities which, through much repetition, had been endowed with gospel-like qualities.
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Radiocarbon Dating inaugurates a new series, "Interpreting the Past," published jointly by the British Museum and the University of California Press. Approaching archaeological techniques and artifacts from an interpretive viewpoint, the series looks in detail at specific classes of artifacts that have contributed most to our knowledge of the past, and at particular investigative techniques that are now being used to refine this knowledge and thereby to question previous assumptions.
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The optimum required quantity of sample for the determination of reliable dates with the smaller possible error fluctuates in each laboratory according to the radiocarbon technique used. TABLE 1 shows the required quantities for different types of sample in the case of the LABORATORY OF ARCHAEOMETRY of N.C.S.R. "DEMOKRITOS".
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Radiocarbon or C14 dating employs complex systems of measuring the unstable isotopes in once living matter. There are three forms of carbon that naturally occur forming the building blocks of all plant and animal life. The stable C12 and C13, and the unstable or radioactive Carbon 14. C14 is found in very low quantities in nature. Only one C14 atom exists for every one trillion C12 atoms.
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Radiocarbon Dating