27th February 2012, 02:38 PM
Jack Wrote:Are you speaking of a particular example? I notice your quoting RC dates incorrectly:face-stir: they should include the error range. No radiocarbon measurement produces a single date.
Or is it an 'off the top of your head' example?
Can't comment on this particular example except to say can I look at your archive and the RC date certificates. There are a multiplicity of factors that could have caused the initial problem.
How large were the bits of pot, were they abraded, who identified them as the suggested styles and why, what was the certainty in the stratigraphy, what were the formation processes of the contexts from which the items came from, what lab did the RC measurement, etc etc etc!
Two of the biggest mistakes often made (not saying is the case here) are firstly assuming that things recorded in the same 'context' are contemporary, and secondly assuming the recorded stratigraphical relationships are law.
Question everything.
i may have taken liberties with the actualitea but i was making the point that absolute dating is just another technique we use - just like typology
If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers