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This could turn into a very, complicated long answer. I'll just contribute a bit and others can supplement it.

Volcanoes themselves tend not to be dated. The rocks they produce are dated by radioisotope dating. Volcanoes produce chemically characteristic types of rock/ash so we can usually tell which volcano a particular rock or ash layer came from. These rocks can be radioisotope dated which gives us an indication of the age of a volcano.

Some elements are radioactive; they decay and so are considered unstable. These elements tend to be big and so the nucleus doesn't hold together as well as smaller elements. This happens at a fixed rate, called its half-life. The original atom (called the parent isotope) decays into new elements (the daughter isotope(s)). We can calculate the rate of decay and therefore we can calculate a ratio between parent and daughter isotopes which in turns gives us an indication of how old it is. One of the best known decay series is that of uranium 238 which eventually decays to lead 206.

In a liquid state, these daughter isotopes can often escape. However, when lava freezes and becomes solid rock, they can't.

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10y ago

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