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A Personal Reflection on 40 Years of Radiocarbon Dating and Archaeology1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 December 2016

Mark Van Strydonck
Mark Van Strydonck*
Affiliation:
Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage (KIK-IRPA), Jubelpark 1, B-1000 Brussels, Belgium
*
*Corresponding author. Email: mark.vanstrydonck@kikirpa.be.
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Abstract

In 1981, the first 14C and Archaeology Symposium was organized because it was felt necessary to have a symposium that focused on the specific problems related to the use of 14C dating in archaeology. The dating method has been constantly changing and approving itself technically as well as in the application of the method. The relationship between the archaeologists and the 14C dating laboratories has, however, never been straightforward. For a lot of 14C laboratories, archaeology was not their core business. For archaeologists, the main problem arose from an insufficient knowledge of natural sciences. The last decennia, however, 14C and archaeology are growing towards one another. One of the reasons might be the introduction of small exclusively 14C-dedicated machines and the availability of fully automatic graphitization lines.

Keywords

radiocarbon datinghistory of the methodarchaeology
Type
Keynote Paper
Information
Radiocarbon , Volume 59 , Special Issue 5: 8th International Symposium, Edinburgh, 27 June – 1 July, 2016 Part 1 of 2 , October 2017 , pp. 1241 - 1250
Copyright
© 2016 by the Arizona Board of Regents on behalf of the University of Arizona 

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Footnotes

1

Written version of the opening speech delivered at the 8th International Symposium 14C and Archaeology, Edinburgh.

Selected Papers from the 2015 Radiocarbon Conference, Dakar, Senegal, 16–20 November 2015

References

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