11th March 2013, 12:25 PM
pdurdin Wrote:Would you (or someone else) care to expand upon that? Why is charcoal a poor sample, for instance?wood for hearths/ovens/corn drying etc could lie around for yonks before someone burns it - oak for instance could already be 500 years old before it dies and another 100 before someone burns it. any fleck of charcoal could lie around in soil for 1000s years and still turn up in a sealed context - even stuck to a much later pot. even if you date a large sample the conventional way you still cant be sure how many episodes of burning you are measuring and intrusive charcoal will change the average you can measure etc. if you sample a burned down building you still cant know if the wood was reused from an earlier structure
i used to think hazel nutshells were more reliable but they aint.
If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers