ANTH 202 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Radiocarbon Dating, Absolute Dating, Relative Dating
Document Summary
Lecture 7 chapter 6: chronology building: how to get a date. Absolute dates are expressed in some kind of a calendar date in days, years, centuries, or millennia. Relative dates can only tell us earlier than or later than . This was the only thing available before 1950. The law of superposition: in an undisturbed site the soil layers found lower down were. Geology has the index fossil concept: some fossils are so well known that a layer containing them can be dated. In archaeology there is the similar time-marker concept. Taken from geology, it is the idea that strata containing similar fossils/artifacts are of similar age. In archaeology, strata within sites can be dated using distinctive artifacts typical of a particular time period. examples: clovis and other datable points, or datable pottery styles. Orders artifacts based cultural style changes over time (creating a chart of battleship.
