The Dating Habits of Archaeologists

For decades, people assumed that our ancestors started to make stone tools 2.4 million years ago. But a 2015 study found something different. Stone tools discovered in Kenya were actually 3 million years old! This discovery pushed the development of stone tools back by 700 000 years. It changed the whole story of human evolution!
Knowing the age of an artifact can be key to understanding the history of a site, a group, a region, or even human history in general. People who study human history through physical remains are called archaeologists.

But how do archaeologists figure out how old something is? The answer depends on whether the material being tested is organic or inorganic. Organic material comes from living things. Food or plants are examples. Inorganic things do not. Stone is an example.

Most archaeological sites do contain organic materials. The most common method for determining their age is radiocarbon dating. For very old objects, archaeologists might use potassium-argon dating. Let’s learn about these methods in more detail.

What is radiocarbon dating?

Radiocarbon dating tests the level of the unstable isotope carbon-14 (¹⁴C) in organic materials. Living organisms like plants, animals, and humans all absorb ¹⁴C from the atmosphere and the foods they eat. After organisms die, the ¹⁴C in their bodies begins to break down and turn into the stable carbon-12 (¹²C). The half-life of ¹⁴C is approximately 5 730 years. This means that 5 730 years after something dies, its bones and tissues will only contain 50% of the ¹⁴C it had when it died.

Did you know?

Archaeologists often use the growth rings of trees to study human or ecological history. This is called dendrochronology.

Imagine you’re working on an archaeological dig and you find some elk bones. You could use these elk bones to figure out how old the site is. First, you would take a small sample of bone and carefully clean it to remove anything that doesn’t belong, like contaminants, tree roots or soil. Once the sample is clean, you can run it through an accelerator mass spectrometer (AMS).

This highly sensitive machine measures the amount of ¹⁴C and ¹²C left in the bone. Then you can compare these levels to existing benchmarks and figure out when the elk was eaten. This will give you a very good idea of how old the site is. For example, if there was 50% ¹⁴C and ¹²C left, the bone - and the site - would be about 5 730 years old.

Did you know?

The first results of radiocarbon dating were published in 1949 by an American chemist named Willard Libby. He received the 1960 Nobel Prize in chemistry for this work. 

What is potassium-argon dating? 

Radiocarbon dating can be used to date objects that are up to 50 000 years old. Anything older won’t have any ¹⁴C left in it. So what about fossils and inorganic materials like those 3-million-year-old stone tools found in Kenya? Archaeologists can date these materials using a similar method called potassium-argon dating. When rocks, including fossils, are created, potassium-40 (⁴⁰K) becomes trapped inside and slowly decays into argon-40 (⁴⁰Ar). The half-life of ⁴⁰K is 1.3 billion years. That means measuring the ratio of ⁴⁰K to ⁴⁰Ar can provide dates for objects that are millions of years old.

What is the marine reservoir effect?

Unfortunately, radiocarbon dating and related techniques are not perfect. For example, archaeologists must take the marine reservoir effect into account. ¹⁴C levels vary over time. This is because time brings changes in the atmosphere where the ¹⁴C is produced. However, oceans are so deep that the ¹⁴C from the atmosphere takes a very long time to reach the bottom. Any location in the ocean that is deeper than 10 metres has ¹⁴C levels that can be up to 400 years older than on the surface.

What does this mean for archaeologists? They have to remember that the remains of humans and animals with diets rich in seafood will have ¹⁴C levels that suggest they are  older than they actually are. Archaeologists take the marine reservoir effect into account by making small corrections to test results. For example, historical records indicate that King Richard III of England died and was buried in 1485. When his skeleton was discovered, radiocarbon dating suggested it had been buried sometime between 1412 and 1449. However, other tests showed that the skeleton contained high levels of marine protein. After taking the marine reservoir effect into account, radiocarbon dating actually pointed to a burial date between 1475 and 1530. These corrected results supported the theory that the skeleton belonged to Richard III.

Summing up...

Radiocarbon dating was first used at the end of the 1940s. Since then, it has remained one of the most important tools used by archaeologists. It is only one of many different dating methods. However, it’s the most commonly used. That’s because most archaeological sites contain organic materials. But for really old artifacts, archaeologists can use potassium-argon dating. 

Radiometric dating can help archaeologists understand all kinds of aspects of the past. It can help them understand technological advances, determine when a group of people moved to a certain region, or even identify a famous king. It’s an archaeologist’s best friend!