n.
The determination of the approximate age of an ancient object, such as an archaeological specimen, by measuring the amount of carbon 14 it contains. Also called carbon dating, carbon-14 dating.
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The determination of the approximate age of an ancient object, such as an archaeological specimen, by measuring the amount of carbon 14 it contains. Also called carbon dating, carbon-14 dating.
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A method of obtaining age estimates on organic materials which has been used to date samples as old as 75,000 years. The method has provided age determinations in archeology, geology, geophysics, and other branches of science.
Radiocarbon (14C) determinations can be obtained on wood; charcoal; marine and fresh-water shell; bone and antler; peat and organic-bearing sediments; carbonate deposits such as tufa, caliche, and marl; and dissolved carbon dioxide (CO2) and carbonates in ocean, lake, and ground-water sources. Each sample type has specific problems associated with its use for dating purposes, including contamination and special environmental effects. While the impact of 14C dating has been most profound in archeological research and particularly in prehistoric studies, extremely significant contributions have also been made in hydrology and oceanography. In addition, beginning in the 1950s the testing of thermonuclear weapons injected large amounts of artificial 14C (“bomb 14C”) into the atmosphere, permitting it to be used as a geochemical tracer.
Carbon (C) has three naturally occurring isotopes. Both 12C and 13C are stable, but 14C decays by very weak beta decay (electron emission) to nitrogen-14 (14N) with a half-life of approximately 5700 years. Naturally occurring 14C is produced as a secondary effect of cosmic-ray bombardment of the upper atmosphere. As 14CO2, it is distributed on a worldwide basis into various atmospheric, biospheric, and hydrospheric reservoirs on a time scale much shorter than its half-life. Metabolic processes in living organisms and relatively rapid turnover of carbonates in surface ocean waters maintain 14C levels at approximately constant levels in most of the biosphere. The natural 14C activity in the geologically recent contemporary “prebomb” biosphere was approximately 13.5 disintegrations per minute per gram of carbon. See also Cosmogenic nuclide; Isotope.
To the degree that 14C production has proceeded long enough without significant variation to produce an equilibrium or steady-state condition, 14C levels observed in contemporary materials may be used to characterize the original 14C activity in the corresponding carbon reservoirs. Once a sample has been removed from exchange with its reservoir, as at the death of an organism, the amount of 14C begins to decrease as a function of its half-life. A 14C age determination is based on a measurement of the residual 14C activity in a sample compared to the activity of a sample of assumed zero age (a contemporary standard) from the same reservoir. The relationship between the 14C age and the 14C activity of a sample is given by the equation below,
where t is radiocarbon years B.P. (before the present), λ is the decay constant of 14C (related to the half-life t1/2 by the expression t1/2 = 0.693/λ), Ao is the activity of the contemporary standards, and As is the activity of the unknown age samples. Conventional radiocarbon dates are calculated by using this formula, an internationally agreed half-life value of 5568 ± 30 years, and a specific contemporary standard.
The naturally occurring isotopes of carbon occur in the proportion of approximately 98.9% 12C, 1.1% 13C, and 10−10% 14C. The extremely small amount of radiocarbon in natural materials was one reason why 14C was one of the isotopes which had been produced artificially in the laboratory before being detected in natural concentrations. A measurement of the 14C content of an organic sample will provide an accurate determination of the sample's age if it is assumed that (1) the production of 14C by cosmic rays has remained essentially constant long enough to establish a steady state in the 14C/12C ratio in the atmosphere, (2) there has been a complete and rapid mixing of 14C throughout the various carbon reservoirs, (3) the carbon isotope ratio in the sample has not been altered except by 14C decay, and (4) the total amount of carbon in any reservoir has not been altered. In addition, the half-life of 14C must be known with sufficient accuracy, and it must be possible to measure natural levels of 14C to appropriate levels of accuracy and precision.
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A method of determining the age of an object by measuring the amount of radiocarbon (carbon 14) it contains. It is a special example of radioactive dating.
| Geography Dictionary: carbon dating |
A method of assessing the age of an archaeological specimen which is biological in origin (e.g. wood). Radioactive nuclei of carbon-14 form as cosmic rays bombard atmospheric nitrogen. Some of these radio-carbon atoms are incorporated into living matter via carbon dioxide, during photosynthesis. As the matter dies, the radio-carbon begins to decay, at a rate known as the half-life. The ratio of radio-carbon to regular carbon is measured. From this ratio, the date of the specimen may be calculated.
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For more information on carbon-14 dating, visit Britannica.com.
| Archaeology Dictionary: radiocarbon dating |
A technique for determining the absolute date of organic matter developed by Willard Libby, Willard Frank in 1949 and based on the fact that all living organisms contain a small but constant proportion of the radioactive isotope of carbon, 14C. When the organism dies the 14C is no longer replenished from the environment and what is present at the time of death decays at a constant rate. The half-life of 14C was calculated by Libby as being 5568 years. By measuring the radioactivity of the carbon remaining in a specimen its age can be calculated; radiocarbon determinations (usually expressed as an age BP or as RCYBP) have to be calibrated using curves derived from tree-ring chronologies to give calendar dates (usually expressed as bc/ad or cal.bc/cal.ad). Radiocarbon dating is useful back to about 70 000 years ago.
| US History Encyclopedia: Radiocarbon Dating |
Radiocarbon Dating is the measurement of the age of dead matter by comparing the radiocarbon content with that in living matter. The method was discovered at the University of Chicago in the 1940s, but further research had to wait until the end of World War II. Radiocarbon, or radioactive carbon (C-14), is produced by the cosmic rays in the atmosphere and is assimilated only by living beings. At death, the assimilation process stops. Living matter, wherever found on earth, always has the same ratio of radioactive carbon to ordinary carbon. This ratio is enough to be measured by sensitive instruments to about 1 percent accuracy.
The bold assumption that the concentration of radiocarbon in living matter remains constant over all of time appears to be nearly correct, although deviations of a few percentage points do occur. It has been possible to determine the accuracy of the basic assumption back some 8,000 years, and a correction curve has been produced that allows absolute dating by radiocarbon back 8,000 years. The deviation is about 8 percent, at maximum.
The discovery of the radiocarbon dating method has given a much firmer base to archaeology and anthropology. For example, human settlers, such as the big-game hunting Clovis peoples of the American High Plains and the Southwest, first came to the Americas in substantial numbers at least 12,000 years ago. On the other hand, the magnificent color paintings of the Lascaux Cave in France are 16,000 years old, made 4,000 years before the first substantial number of human beings came to the Americas. By the end of the twentieth century, firm radiocarbon dates for human occupation of North America had never exceeded 12,000 years—the famous Kennewick Man, discovered in Oregon in 1996, was determined to be 9,300 years old—whereas in Europe and Asia Minor these dates reached back to the limits of the radiocarbon method and well beyond, according to other dating methods.
Bibliography
Libby, Willard F. Radiocarbon Dating. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965.
Renfrew, Colin. Before Civilization: The Radiocarbon Revolution and Prehistoric Europe. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1979.
| Science Q&A: What is radiocarbon dating? |
Radiocarbon dating is a process for determining the age of a prehistoric object by measuring its radiocarbon content. The technique was developed by an American chemist, Dr. Willard F. Libby (1908-1980), in the late 1940s. All living things contain radiocarbon (carbon 14), an isotope that occurs in a small percentage of atmospheric carbon dioxide as a result of cosmic ray bombardment. After an animal or plant dies, it no longer absorbs radiocarbon and the radiocarbon present begins to decay (break down by releasing particles) at an exact and uniform rate. Its half-life of 5,730 years made it useful for measuring prehistory and events occurring within the past 35,000 to 50,000 years. A recent development, called the Accelerated Mass Spectrometer, which separates and detects atomic particles of different mass, can establish more accurate dates with a smaller sample. The remaining radiocarbon can be measured and compared to that of a living sample. In this way, the age of the 50,000-year-old or less animal or plant (or more precisely the elapsed time since its death) can be determined.
Since Libby's work, other isotopes having longer half-lives have been used as "geologic clocks" to date very old rocks. The isotope uranium-238 (decaying to lead-206) has a half-life of 4.5 billion years, uranium-235 (decaying to lead-207) has a value of 704 million years, thorium-232 (decaying to lead-278) has a half-life of 14 billion years, rubidium-87 (decaying to strontium-87) has a half-life value of 48.8 billion years, potassium-40 (decaying to argon-40) has a value of 1.25 billion years, and samarium-147 (decaying to neodymium-143) has a value of 106 billion years. These isotopes are used in dating techniques of gas formation light emission (called thermoluminescence). Other ways to date the past include dating by tree rings (counting its annual growth rings), and dating by thermoremanent magnetism (the magnetic field of the rock is compared to a date chart of changes in the Earth's magnetic field).
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| Science Dictionary: carbon 14 dating |
| Wikipedia: Radiocarbon dating |
Radiocarbon dating, or carbon dating, is a radiometric dating method that uses the naturally occurring radioisotope carbon-14 (14C) to determine the age of carbonaceous materials up to about 60,000 years.[1] Raw, i.e. uncalibrated, radiocarbon ages are usually reported in radiocarbon years "Before Present" (BP), "Present" being defined as AD 1950. Such raw ages can be calibrated to give calendar dates.
One of the most frequent uses of radiocarbon dating is to estimate the age of organic remains from archaeological sites. When plants fix atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) into organic material during photosynthesis they incorporate a quantity of 14C that approximately matches the level of this isotope in the atmosphere (a small difference occurs because of isotope fractionation, but this is corrected after laboratory analysis). After plants die or they are consumed by other organisms (for example, by humans or other animals) the 14C fraction of this organic material declines at a fixed exponential rate due to the radioactive decay of 14C. Comparing the remaining 14C fraction of a sample to that expected from atmospheric 14C allows the age of the sample to be estimated.
The technique of radiocarbon dating was developed by Willard Libby and his colleagues at the University of Chicago in 1949.[citation needed] Emilio Segrè asserted in his autobiography that Enrico Fermi suggested the concept to Libby in a seminar at Chicago that year. Libby estimated that the steady state radioactivity concentration of exchangeable carbon-14 would be about 14 disintegrations per minute (dpm) per gram. In 1960, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry for this work. He first demonstrated the accuracy of radiocarbon dating by accurately measuring the age of wood from an ancient Egyptian royal barge whose age was known from historical documents.[2]
Contents |
Carbon has two stable, nonradioactive isotopes: carbon-12 (12C), and carbon-13 (13C). In addition, there are trace amounts of the unstable isotope carbon-14 (14C) on Earth. Carbon-14 has a half-life of 5730 years, meaning that the amount of carbon-14 in a sample is halved over the course of 5730 years due to radioactive decay. Carbon-14 would have long ago vanished from Earth were it not for the unremitting cosmic ray impacts on nitrogen in the Earth's atmosphere, which create more of the isotope. The neutrons resulting from the cosmic ray interactions participate in the following nuclear reaction on the atoms of nitrogen molecules (N2) in the atmosphere:

The highest rate of carbon-14 production takes place at altitudes of 9 to 15 km (30,000 to 50,000 ft), and at high geomagnetic latitudes, but the carbon-14 spreads evenly throughout the atmosphere and reacts with oxygen to form carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide also permeates the oceans, dissolving in the water. For approximate analysis it is assumed that the cosmic ray flux is constant over long periods of time; thus carbon-14 is produced at a constant rate and the proportion of radioactive to non-radioactive carbon is constant: ca. 1 part per trillion (600 billion atoms/mole). In 1958 Hessel de Vries showed that the concentration of carbon-14 in the atmosphere varies with time and locality. For the most accurate work, these variations are compensated by means of calibration curves. When these curves are used, their accuracy and shape are the factors that determine the accuracy and age obtained for a given sample.
Plants take up atmospheric carbon dioxide by photosynthesis, and are ingested by animals, so every living thing is constantly exchanging carbon-14 with its environment as long as it lives. Once it dies, however, this exchange stops, and the amount of carbon-14 gradually decreases through radioactive beta decay with a half-life of 5,730±40 years.

Carbon-14 was discovered on February 27, 1940, by Martin Kamen and Sam Ruben at the University of California Radiation Laboratory at Berkeley.
The radioactive decay of carbon-14 follows an exponential decay. A quantity is said to be subject to exponential decay if it decreases at a rate proportional to its value. Symbolically, this can be expressed as the following differential equation, where N is the quantity and λ is a positive number called the decay constant:

The solution to this equation is:
,where, for a given sample of carbonaceous matter:
Two related times can be defined:
It can be shown that:
=
= radiocarbon mean- or average-life = 8033 years (Libby value)
=
= radiocarbon half-life = 5568 years (Libby value)Notice that dates are customarily given in years BP which implies t(BP) = -t because the time arrow for dates runs in reverse direction from the time arrow for the corresponding ages. From these considerations and the above equation, it results:
For a raw radiocarbon date:

and for a raw radiocarbon age:

After replacing values, the raw radiocarbon age becomes any of the following equivalent formulae:
using logs base e and the average life:

and
using logs base 2 and the half-life:

Wiggle matching uses the non-linear relationship between the 14C age and calendar age to match the shape of a series of closely sequentially spaced 14C dates with the 14C calibration curve.
Measurements are traditionally made by counting the radioactive decay of individual carbon atoms by gas proportional counting or by liquid scintillation counting. For samples of sufficient size (several grams of carbon) this method is still widely used in the 2000s. Among others, all the tree ring samples used for the calibration curves (see below) were determined by these counting techniques. Such decay counting, however, is relatively insensitive and subject to large statistical uncertainties for small samples. When there is little carbon-14 to begin with, the long radiocarbon half-life means that very few of the carbon-14 atoms will decay during the time allotted for their detection, resulting in few disintegrations per minute.
The sensitivity of the method has been greatly increased by the use of Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS). With this technique 14C atoms can be detected and counted directly vs only detecting those atoms that decay during the time interval allotted for an analysis. AMS allows dating samples containing only a few milligrams of carbon.
Raw radiocarbon ages (i.e., those not calibrated) are usually reported in "years Before Present" (BP). This is the number of radiocarbon years before 1950, based on a nominal (and assumed constant - see "calibration" below) level of carbon-14 in the atmosphere equal to the 1950 level. These raw dates are also based on a slightly-off historic value for the radiocarbon half-life. Such value is used for consistency with earlier published dates (see "Radiocarbon half-life" below). See the section on computation for the basis of the calculations.
Radiocarbon dating laboratories generally report an uncertainty for each date. For example, 3000±30BP indicates a standard deviation of 30 radiocarbon years. Traditionally this included only the statistical counting uncertainty. However, some laboratories supplied an "error multiplier" that could be multiplied by the uncertainty to account for other sources of error in the measuring process. More recently, the laboratories try to quote the overall uncertainty, which is determined from control samples of known age and verified by international intercomparison exercises [6]. In 2008, a typical uncertainty better than ±40 radiocarbon years can be expected for samples younger than 10,000 years. This, however, is only a small part of the uncertainty of the final age determination (see section Calibration below).
As of 2007[update], the limiting age for a 1 milligram sample of graphite is about ten half-lives, approximately 60,000 years[7]. This age is derived from that of the calibration blanks used in an analysis, whose 14C content is assumed to be the result of contamination during processing (as a result of this, some facilities[7] will not report an age greater than 60,000 years for any sample).
A variety of sample processing and instrument-based constraints have been postulated to explain the upper age-limit. To examine instrument-based background activities in the AMS instrument of the W. M. Keck Carbon Cycle Accelerator Mass Spectrometry Laboratory of the University of California, a set of natural diamonds were dated. Natural diamond samples from different sources within rock formations with standard geological ages in excess of 100 my yielded 14C apparent ages 64,920±430 BP to 80,000±1100 BP as reported in 2007[8].
A raw BP date cannot be used directly as a calendar date, because the level of atmospheric 14C has not been strictly constant during the span of time that can be radiocarbon dated. The level is affected by variations in the cosmic ray intensity which is in turn affected by variations in the earth's magnetosphere. In addition, there are substantial reservoirs of carbon in organic matter, the ocean, ocean sediments (see methane hydrate), and sedimentary rocks. Changes in the Earth's climate can affect the carbon flows between these reservoirs and the atmosphere, leading to changes in the atmosphere's 14C fraction.
Aside from these changes due to natural processes, the level has also been affected by human activities. From the beginning of the industrial revolution in the 18th century to the 1950s, the fractional level of 14C decreased because of the admixture of large quantities of CO2 into the atmosphere, due to the excavated oil reserves and combustion production of fossil fuel. This decline is known as the Suess effect, and also affects the 13C isotope. However, atmospheric 14C was almost doubled for a short period during the 1950s and 1960s due to atmospheric atomic bomb tests.
As a consequence, the radiocarbon method shows limitations on dating of materials that are younger than the industrial era. Due to these fluctuations, greater carbon-14 content cannot be taken mean a lesser age. It is expected that in the future the radiocarbon method will become less effective. A calibration curve must sometimes be combined with contextual analysis, because there is not always a direct relationship between age and carbon-14 content.[citation needed]
The raw radiocarbon dates, in BP years, are calibrated to give calendar dates. Standard calibration curves are available, based on comparison of radiocarbon dates of samples that can be dated independently by other methods such as examination of tree growth rings (dendrochronology), deep ocean sediment cores, lake sediment varves, coral samples, and speleothems (cave deposits).
The calibration curves can vary significantly from a straight line, so comparison of uncalibrated radiocarbon dates (e.g., plotting them on a graph or subtracting dates to give elapsed time) is likely to give misleading results. There are also significant plateaus in the curves, such as the one from 11,000 to 10,000 radiocarbon years BP, which is believed to be associated with changing ocean circulation during the Younger Dryas period. Over the historical period from 0 to 10,000 years BP, the average width of the uncertainty of calibrated dates was found to be 335 years, although in well-behaved regions of the calibration curve the width decreased to about 113 years while in ill-behaved regions it increased to a maximum of 801 years. Significantly, in the ill-behaved regions of the calibration curve, increasing the precision of the measurements does not have a significant effect on increasing the accuracy of the dates.[10]
The 2004 version of the calibration curve extends back quite accurately to 26,000 years BP. Any errors in the calibration curve do not contribute more than ±16 years to the measurement error during the historic and late prehistoric periods (0 - 6,000 yrs BP) and no more than ±163 years over the entire 26,000 years of the curve, although its shape can reduce the accuracy as mentioned above.[11] (Link to graphs: [1])
Carbon dating was developed by a team led by Willard Libby. He worked out a carbon-14 half-life of 5568±30 years, the Libby half-life. Later a more accurate figure of 5730±40 years was determined, which is known as the Cambridge half-life. This is, however, not relevant for radiocarbon dating. If calibration is applied, the half-life cancels out, as long as the same value is used throughout the calculations. Laboratories continue to use the Libby figure to avoid inconsistencies with previous publications.
Libby's original exchange reservoir hypothesis assumes that the exchange reservoir is constant all over the world. The calibration method also assumes that the temporal variation in 14C level is global, such that a small number of samples from a specific year are sufficient for calibration.[12] However, since Libby's early work was published (1950 to 1958), latitudinal and continental variations in the carbon exchange reservoir have been observed by Hessel de Vries (1958; as reviewed by Lerman et al., 1959, 1960). Subsequently, methods have been developed that allow the correction of these so-called reservoir effects, including:
These effects were first confirmed when samples of wood from around the world, which all had the same age (based on tree ring analysis), showed deviations from the dendrochronological age. Calibration techniques based on tree-ring samples have contributed to increase the accuracy since 1962, when they were accurate to 700 years at worst.[19]
Relatively recent (2001) evidence has allowed scientists to refine the knowledge of one of the underlying assumptions. A peak in the amount of carbon-14 was discovered by scientists studying speleothems in caves in the Bahamas. Stalagmites are calcium carbonate deposits left behind when seepage water, containing dissolved carbon dioxide, evaporates. Carbon-14 levels were found to be twice as high as modern levels.[20] These discoveries improved the calibration for the radiocarbon technique and extended its usefulness to 45,000 years into the past.[21]
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