Secrets of Archaeological Dating: How Well Does it Work?
Channel: The Archaeologist's Laboratory
Date: 2023-03-06

This video supersedes an earlier video I did on Chronometric Dating in archaeology, updated to reflect the new interface in the Oxcal Radiocarbon software and with a few other improvements. It also focuses on the kinds of events that archaeologists can date, and what errors can occur, but in a realist fashion to counter some people's claim that archaeological dating is simply wrong. Tools like calibration and reservoir corrections make radiocarbon dating - along with a variety of other chronometric tools - invaluable.

You'll find the OxCal software here: https://c14.arch.ox.ac.uk/ 
And one of the good alternatives, BCal, here: https://bcal.shef.ac.uk/ 
Both have good tutorials and work well online. OxCal is more the "standard" in archaeology, but you might find BCal more user-friendly.

Radiocarbon dating is the most important tool for archaeological chronology of the last 50,000 years or so and is applicable to a wide range of organic materials. However, the interpretation of radiocarbon evidence is not always simple. In this video, I discuss what constitute potentially datable events, how a radiocarbon date might relate to an archaeologically interesting "target event," and how we can conceptualize dating errors that result when the dated event is not really the same as the target event. Critics who want to reject radiometric dating outright (often in favour of Creationist accounts) ignore or misrepresent the complexities of the method. There certainly can be (and are) errors, but it is possible to correct for all but the statistical errors and occasional human errors. Overall, radiometric dating is very effective.
   In the last half of the video, I briefly discuss radiocarbon calibration and demonstrate, with some simple examples, the use of Bayesian modelling in OxCal to interpret sets of dates that fall into three distinct periods, and to explore how the events that mark the beginnings or ends of periods relate to other dated events, such as rapid climate events. At the end, I outline some basic good habits in the reporting of radiocarbon evidence.
   The following provide more information on radiocarbon dating.

For technical aspects and AMS dating: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xKvq6VLe4s
Lecture by Derek Hamilton on Bayesian modelling: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ygnl1nkpwAo

These exercises are still using the old version. I'll replace them as soon as I find updated ones:
OxCal Workbook 1 (no sound): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTsPJQ3JNMs
OxCal Exercise 5.1 - Contiguous Phases (no sound): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xw_wfjUNrvI

And, since stratigraphy is very important in radiocarbon interpretation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zx5voPLKbyc

Finally, here is some introduction to Bayesian thinking more generally:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NMxiOGL39M 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3OJEae7Qb_o
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrK7X_XlGB8&t=365s

#archaeology #chronology #radiocarbon #dendrochronology #archaeometry