HIS6E01-PRINCIPLES AND METHODS OF

ARCHAEOLOGY

MODULE-4 ABSOLUTE AND RELATIVE DATING

Prepared by
Priyanka.E.K
Dept of History
Little Flower College
Guruvayoor
 Archaeological scientists have two primary ways of telling
the age of artefacts and the sites from which they came:
relative dating and absolute dating.
 Types of Dating
 There are mainly two types of dating; i) relative and ii)
absolute or chronometric dating.
 Relative dating fixes a time frame in relation to other
strata or material and not in absolute dates in numbers.
 It can only define the antiquity in terms of older or younger
than something else and makes it possible to arrange a
series of things in proper chronological order.
 But it is difficult to know the total time span involved in
the intervals between the things.
 On the other hand the absolute dating technique exhibit
chronology in terms of years.
 It offers precise and accurate dating. There may be
marginal errors which are almost negligible.
 Some of the common and widely applied absolute
dating methods are Carbon-14, Potassium-Argon or
K-A40, Thermoluminesence or TL. Dendrochronology
etc.
 In the early stage of prehistoric studies there was
only relative chronology. But in the last fifty years,
with the emergence of C14 method there has been
total change in dating scenario.
 Relative dating, however, is still applied in those
areas where the deposits containing organic materials
cannot be dated by any absolute dating techniques.
 Several disciplines like geology, physics, chemistry,
botany, palaeontology contributed towards their
development.
 These methods can be discussed under two
categories, absolute and relative dating methods.
A list of some of the absolute and relative
methods are given below -
 1. Relative Dating:
 Stratigraphy
 Typology
 Cross dating
 Sequence dating
 Fluorine, uranium and nitrogen analysis
 Palaeontology- study of fossil remains of animals
 Palynology-pollen analysis
 2. Absolute Dating
 Carbon Dating
 Potassium- argon Dating
 Thermoluminescence
 Dendrochronology
 Electron Spin Resonance
 Fission Track Dating
 Palaemagnetic dating
 Obsidian hydration
 Varve analysis
 Amino Acid Racemaization.
 Distinction between Relative and Absolute Dating:
 In the early stage of prehistoric studies, dating of any event
or site was obtained tentatively. A particular event or
specimen is dated in relation to other event or some
reference point.
 By relative methods one can know whether a particular
culture is younger or older than another one, and thereby
arrange a series of things in a sequential time frame.
 These methods were basically depending upon
stratigraphic position of the site or kind of remains
associated with the site. However, these methods have
never been able to provide a date in terms of years, nor it
can calculate the total time span involved in each cultural
period.
 The relative chronology, in the words of Wheeler (1956), is
"...the arrangement of the products of non-historic societies
into a time relationship which may not have any dates but
which has a sequence..."
 Unlike relative dating, absolute or chronometric
dating is primarily sought to facilitate time sequence
in terms of years. It provides the actual time spanned
by a site
 These methods can provide chronological sequence of
even geographically isolated events or culture. Thus,
the rate of change differential development in
separate areas, and the identification of the
geographic sources of widespread cultural influences
can be established with the help of different absolute
dating.
 Absolute dating or chronometric dating usually
demands high technology, laboratory and hence
costly. It also demands the help of sciences like
geophysics, geochemistry, astronomy, nuclear physics
etc.
FISSION-TRACK DATING
 New technique of geoarchaeology
 Fission-track dating, method of age determination that makes
use of the damage done by the spontaneous fission of
uranium-238, the most abundant isotope of uranium
 The fission process results in the release of several hundred
million electron volts of energy and produces a large amount of
radiation damage before its energy is fully absorbed.
 The damage, or fission tracks, can be made visible by the
preferential leaching (removal of material by solution) of the
host substance with a suitable chemical reagent; the leaching
process allows the etched fission-track pits to be viewed and
counted under an ordinary optical microscope.
 The amount of uranium present can be determined by
irradiation to produce thermal fission of uranium-235, which
produces another population of tracks, these related to the
uranium concentration of the mineral
 Thus, the ratio of naturally produced, spontaneous fission
tracks to neutron-induced fission tracks is a measure of the
age of the sample.
 A wide variety of minerals have been fission-track dated, as
have natural and artificial glasses. Fission-track dating has
been used for very old samples (e.g., meteorites i.e. piece of
rock or metals)) and also for the dating of very young
specimens (e.g., artifacts from archaeological sites).
 Some volcanic minerals and glasses, such as
obsidian(vollcanic rock), contain uranium-238 (238U).
 Over time, these substances become "scratched." The
marks, called tracks, are the damage caused by the fission
(splitting) of the uranium atoms.
 When an atom of 238U splits, two "daughter" atoms rocket
away from each other, leaving in their wake tracks in the
material in which they are embedded.
 The rate at which this process occurs is proportional to the
decay rate of 238U. The decay rate is measured in terms of
the half-life (time required for a quantity to reduce to half
its initial value) of the element, or the time it takes for half
of the element to split into its daughter atoms.
ELECTRON SPIN RESONANCE (ESR)
 In the last 20 years, the Electron Spin Resonance (ESR) dating
method has allowed the establishment of a chronological time frame
over most of the history of human evolution.
 Despite many difficulties found for ESR dating of bones and
carbonates, tooth enamel dated by Electron Spin Resonance (ESR)
has been proven as a reliable method in its application to fossil teeth
and quartz.
 Both of the latter materials have allowed dating of Early and Middle
Pleistocene sites which are not datable using other methods.
 In particular, recent discoveries of human remains in Western Europe
have been proposed to be sites of the earliest arrival of humans there,
and have been dated to the Early Pleistocene by Electron Spin
Resonance (ESR) using quartz and tooth enamel.
 Electron Spin Resonance (ESR) method can be applied to different
types of samples in various environments; its contribution to the
elaboration of a chronostratigraphic(stratigraphichy that studies the
age of rock strata) frame is of a great importance for the
understanding of the Homo erectus dispersals out of Africa and
especially for the first settlements in Europe.
 Electron Spin Resonance (ESR) dates ranging between 1.7 and 2.3 Ma
have been proposed for the South African sites Sterkfontein and
Swartzkrans, indicating that the whole Quaternary period can be
dated.
VARVE ANALYSIS
 Varve analysis, one of the oldest dating methods which demonstrate
seasonal variation and also reflect the climatic conditions of ancient
time
 Evolved by Gerard De Geer
 Depends on the waters thaat flow down from the glaciated areas
 The word varve in Swedish means annual layers of sediments
deposited at the bottom of the lakes by the runoff from melting glacial
ice.
 The method is based on the relative thickness of the varves and their
comparison to the new sections as in tree ring analysis.
 Formation of varves depends on climatic variation.
 In summer when ice melts coarse sediments deposits at the bottom
and in winter when the lake is frozen, the finer sediments deposit at
the top.
 It is possible to measure the relative thickness of the varves and
obtain a series to which one can compare and correlate new sections
as they are discovered.
 The application of varve dating is restricted by several factors.
 First, it is because varve accumulation occurs only to glacial
areas of the world.
 Second, many of the Pleistocene glacial areas has receded
nowadays and affecting the supply of sediments. Therefore
outside Scandinavia it is difficult to find continuous sequence
of varves reaching the present. The longest sequence known
goes back only 17,000 years.
 Third, the varves may form frequently rather than annually
depending on the pattern of the melting.
 However, instead of the limitations, varve analysis can be
used indirectly for archaeological dating.
 It has been used in Baltic area, North America, South America
and Africa.
 In North America, Ernst Antevs has made several attempts to
relate Pleistocene geological formations in the American
Southwest to events that produced varves in the northern
parts of North America.
AMINO ACID RACEMISATION TECHNIQUE

 Amino Acid Racemisation, a method of absolute dating

applied to human fossils is developed very recently.
 This is based on the fact that all living organisms have L-
amino acid in their protein and after death, and over a long
period of time all the L-amino acids except glycine undergo
change called racemisation and became non protein D-
amino acid.
 The proportion of these D-amino acids increases with time.
 Thus the age of the skeletal materials that are found in
archaeological sites can be estimated by determining the
amount of change, racemisation that has occurred.
 Amino Acid Racemisation (AAR) is a useful comparative
dating method with great potential, but it introduces
problems of calibration and the requirement of an intimate
knowledge of the palaeo-environmental conditions of the
bone deposition site.
 Amino acid racimization is based on the principle that
amino acids (except glycine, a very simple amino acid) exist
in two mirror image forms called stereoisomers.
 Living organisms (with the exception of some microbes)
synthesize and incorporate only the L-form into proteins.
 This means that the ratio of the D-form to the L-form is
zero (D/L=0).
 When these organisms die, the L-amino acids are slowly
converted into D-amino acids in a process called
racimization.
 This occurs because protons (H+) are removed from the
amino acids by acids or bases present in the burial
environment.
 The protons are quickly replaced, but will return to either
side of the amino acid, not necessarily to the side from
which they came. This may form a D-amino acid instead of
an L–amino acid. The reversible reaction eventually
creates equal amounts of L–and D-forms (D/L=1.0).
 The rate at which the reaction occurs is different
for each amino acid; in addition, it depends upon
the moisture, temperature , and pH of the
postmortem conditions.
 The higher the temperature, the faster the
reaction occurs, so the cooler the burial
environment, the greater the dating range.
 The burial conditions are not always known,
however, and can be difficult to estimate.
 For this reason, and because some of the amino
acid racimization dates have disagreed with
dates achieved by other methods, the technique is
no longer widely used.
OBSIDIAN HYDRATION
 Obsidian hydration dating (OHD) is a
geochemical method of determining age of an
artifact made of obsidian.
 Obsidian, or volcanic glass, is formed by the rapid
cooling of silica-rich lava.
 Obsidian is a volcanic glass that was used by
prehistoric people as a raw material in the
manufacture of stone tools such as points, knives,
or other cutting tools through knapping, or
breaking off pieces in a controlled manner.
 In 1948, two geologists, Irving Friedman and
Robert Smith, began looking into obsidian's
potential as a time marker.
 They introduced the obsidian hydration dating
method to the archaeological community in 1960.
 It may be used in two ways: as a relative dating
method to determine if one artifact is older or younger
than another, or as an absolute dating method where
a calendar date (AD/BC) is produced.
 The decision to use it as a relative or absolute dating
method depends upon whether the environmental
conditions (eg. soil temperature and soil relative
humidity) of the archaeological site are known.
 Obsidian hydration dating is based on the fact that a
fresh surface is created on a piece of obsidian in the
tool manufacturing, or flint knapping, process.
 Obsidian contains about 0.2 percent water.
 When a piece of obsidian is fractured,
atmospheric water is attracted to the surface and
begins to diffuse into the glass.
 This results in the formation of a water rich
hydration rind that increases in depth with time.
 The hydration process continues until the fresh
obsidian surface contains about 3.5 percent
water. This is the saturation point.
 The thickness of the hydration rind can be
identified in petrographic thin sections cut
normal to the surface and observed under a
microscope.
 A distinct diffusion front can be recognized by an
abrupt change in refractive index at the inner
edge of the hydration rind.
 These fronts or rinds of hydration are denser
than the un-hydrated inside, and the un-
hydrated zone has different optical properties.
 Friedman and Smith reasoned that the degree of
hydration observed on an obsidian artifact could
tell archaeologists how long it had been since
that surface was created by a flint knapper.
 Three steps are required to determine a calendar
date from an obsidian artifact. These are the
determination of: 1) the hydration rate, 2) the
thickness of the hydration rim, and 3) the soil
temperature and soil relative humidity at the
archaeological site.
 The Limitations of Obsidian Hydration Dating
 The rate of hydration is not uniform throughout the
world. Variations exist in temperature over time from
site to site. Temperature effects are particularly
difficult to evaluate. Variations also exist in sample
chemical composition. Samples from different
obsidian sources hydrate at different rates. Moisture
is another source of variability. The amount of
moisture present at a site can affect the hydration
rate of an obsidian sample.
 Artifact reuse may lead to an erroneous date. For
example, one person fashions a tool out of an obsidian
nodule and uses it to skin a deer. Once that person
finishes using the tool, it is discarded. Several
hundred years later, a second person finds the tool, re
sharpens it, uses it to shave the bark off of a tree
branch, and then later discards it as well.
 Several thousand years later, an archaeologist
discovers the tool and takes it to a laboratory to
be dated. The archaeologist found the tool at a
site that was an arrowshaft workshop. However,
instead of dating the surface on the tool that was
used to shave bark, the surface that was used to
skin the deer several hundred years earlier is
dated. The archaeologist, would be lead to believe
by this erroneous date that arrow production
started several hundred years earlier than what
was expected.
RELATIVE DATING

 Dating methods, such as radiocarbon dating,

dendro-chronology or tree-ring dating, and
potassium-argon dating, that may furnish an
absolute date for an archaeological site, are a
contribution of the physical and the natural
sciences.
 But absolute dating methods are not always
useful; the particular circumstances to which
they apply do not exist at every site.
 In such cases, archaeologists may employ
relative dating techniques. Relative dating places
assemblages of artifacts in time, in relation to
[artifact] types similar in form and function.
 I. Stratigraphy or the Law of Superposition
 Stratigraphy can be described as a "layer cake" type
arrangement of deposits called strata, with the older
layer beneath the latest.
 Stratigraphy is the study of layers of rocks or the
objects embedded within those layers.
 It is based on the assumption that deeper layers were
deposited earlier, and thus are older than more
shallow layers.
 The sequential layers of rock represent sequential
intervals of time.
 Although these units may be sequential, they are not
necessarily continuous due to erosional removal of
some intervening units.
 The smallest of these rock units that can be matched
to a specific time interval is called a bed.
 Beds that are related are grouped together into
members, and members are grouped into formations.
 This technique helps the archaeologist arrange the
site in a vertical temporal sequence, which may then
be compared to sites of similar age or type.
 For example a pile of newspapers that have been
stacked every day for a week. The oldest newspaper
will be on the bottom, the remainder stacked in
relative chronological order from the oldest to the
latest edition. This is the concept of stratigraphy--or
the Law of Superposition.
 Stratigraphic sequences in the field, however, are
sometimes unreliable.
 Suppose the inhabitants of a previous site dug a
large hole. The top of the heap of excavated dirt would
date the oldest.
 Or perhaps a burrowing animal tunneled down
through a site, causing artifacts buried above to fall to
lower levels.
 Natural processes like frost heaving, erosion, and the
down-slope movement of soils in colder climates
(solifluction) can alter the original context in which
the artifacts were deposited.
 Stratigraphic levels can be horizontal as well as
vertical.
 On beaches, where the configuration of the shoreline
has changed through time, the earliest site may be
inland, the later site closest to shore.
 The stratigraphic levels would then be spatially
horizontal, conforming to the changing coastline.
 Horizontal stratigraphy may also occur when a later
culture settles next to an earlier abandoned site,
thereby appearing to be contemporary to the older
site.
 Despite problems of interpretation, stratigraphy is a
powerful archaeological tool in unlocking the
mysteries of past lifeways.
 II. Seriation
 When a stratigraphic sequence is lacking, another relative
dating technique known as seriation may be applied.
 This technique dates a site based on the relative frequency of
types of artifacts whose dates of use or manufacture are
known.
 The basic assumption underlying seriation is that the
popularity of culturally produced items varies through time,
with a frequency pattern that has been called the "battleship
curve."
 An item is introduced, it grows in popularity, then its use
begins to wane as it is replaced by another form.
 Certain types of artifacts have been identified as particularly
useful temporal markers, for example, gravestones, projectile
points, lamps, pottery sherds.
 Before being able to interpret materials found at a site, an
archaeologist faces the task of sorting the artifacts into
manageable units for analysis.
 This is frequently a difficult task. Sorting is usually based on
form and function. What does it look like? What is it made of?
Is it decorated in any way? Have you ever seen it before?
 Seriation is the ordering of objects according to their age. It is
a relative dating method.
 In a landmark study, archaeologist James Ford used seriation
to determine the chronological order of American Indian
pottery styles in the Mississippi Valley.
 Artifact styles such as pottery types are seriated by analyzing
their abundances through time.
 This is done by counting the number of pieces of each style of
the artifact in each stratigraphic layer and then graphing the
data.
 A layer with many pieces of a particular style will be
represented by a wide band on the graph, and a layer with
only a few pieces will be represented by a narrow band.
 The bands are arranged into battleship-shaped curves, with
each style getting its own curve. The curves are then
compared with one another, and from this the relative ages of
the styles are determined.
 A limitation to this method is that it assumes all differences in
artifact styles are the result of different periods of time, and
are not due to the immigration of new cultures into the area
of study.
URANIUM SERIES DATING
Uranium-series dating is based on measurement
of the radioactivity of short-lived daughter
isotopes of uranium formed in samples which
initially contained only the parent uranium.
 Materials suitable for U-series dating are found
in many prehistoric archaeological sites, and
include stalagmitic layers (flowstones), and
spring-deposited travertines(limestone deposited
by mineral springs). Some marls(lime rich mud)
and calcretes(lime stone formed by cementation
of soil) are also datable using isochron methods,
whereas dates on molluscan shells, bones and
teeth are less reliable.
 Uranium series dating techniques rely on the fact
that radioactive uranium and thorium isotopes decay
into a series of unstable, radioactive "daughter"
isotopes; this process continues until a stable (non-
radioactive) lead isotope is formed.
 The daughters have relatively short half-lives ranging
from a few hundred thousand years down to only a
few years.
 The "parent" isotopes have half-lives of several billion
years.
 This provides a dating range for the different
uranium series of a few thousand years to 500,000
years.
 Uranium series have been used to date uranium-rich
rocks, deep-sea sediments, shells, bones, and teeth,
and to calculate the ages of ancient lakebeds.
 The two types of uranium series dating techniques
are daughter deficiency methods and daughter excess
methods.
 In daughter deficiency situations, the parent radioisotope is
initially deposited by itself, without its daughter (the
isotope into which it decays) present.
 Through time, the parent decays to the daughter until the
two are in equilibrium (equal amounts of each).
 The age of the deposit may be determined by measuring
how much of the daughter has formed, providing that
neither isotope has entered or exited the deposit after its
initial formation.
 Carbonates may be dated this way using, for example, the
daughter/parent isotope pair protactinium-231/uranium-
235 (231Pa/235U).
 Living mollusks and corals will only take up dissolved
compounds such as isotopes of uranium, so they will
contain no protactinium, which is insoluble.
 Protactinium-231 begins to accumulate via the decay of
235U after the organism dies.

 Scientists can determine the age of the sample by

measuring how much 231Pa is present and calculating how
long it would have taken that amount to form
 In daughter deficiency situations, the parent
radioisotope is initially deposited by itself,
without its daughter (the isotope into which it
decays) present.
 Through time, the parent decays to the daughter
until the two are in equilibrium (equal amounts
of each).
 The age of the deposit may be determined by
measuring how much of the daughter has formed,
providing that neither isotope has entered or
exited the deposit after its initial formation.
 Scientists can determine the age of the sample by
measuring how much 231Pa is present and
calculating how long it would have taken that
amount to form.