radiocarbon dating

Method of dating organic materials (for example, bone or wood), used in archaeology. Plants take up carbon dioxide gas from the atmosphere and incorporate it into their tissues, and some of that carbon dioxide contains the radioactive isotope carbon-14 (see radiocarbon cycle). As this decays at a known rate (half of it decays every 5,730 years), the time elapsed since the plant died can be measured in a laboratory. Animals take carbon-14 into their bodies from eating plant tissues and their remains can be similarly dated. After 120,000 years so little carbon-14 is left that no measure is possible (see half-life).

Radiocarbon dating was first developed in 1949 by the US chemist Willard Libby. The method yields reliable ages back to about 50,000 years, but its results require correction since Libby's assumption that the concentration of carbon-14 in the atmosphere was constant through time has subsequently been proved wrong. Discrepancies were noted between carbon-14 dates for Egyptian tomb artefacts and construction dates recorded in early local texts. Radiocarbon dates from tree rings (see dendrochronology) showed that material before 1000 BC had been exposed to greater concentrations of carbon-14. Now radiocarbon dates are calibrated against calendar dates obtained from tree rings, or, for earlier periods, against uranium/thorium dates obtained from coral. The carbon-14 content is determined by counting beta particles with either a proportional gas or a liquid scintillation counter for a period of time. A new advance, accelerator mass spectrometry, requires only tiny samples and counts the atoms of carbon-14 directly, disregarding their decay.