ANTH 210 Lecture Notes - Lecture 17: Absolute Dating, Willard Libby, Before Present
Document Summary
Or determining how many years ago: naming conventions. Bce/ce= before common era and common era same as bc/ad. Physicist of univ. of chicago and participant in the manhattan project. Announced the first age determinations from c14 dating and received a nobel prize for discovery: radiocarbon dating. 14cisotop is unstable and decays a constant half life of 5730 years: radiocarbon 14. Three carbon isotopes, carbon 12, 13 and 14. Carbon 14 is unstable and decays at know rate after death. When you die, you stop taking in carbon-following death of organism- Compared remaining carbon 14 to remaining nitrogen 14 to find original amount. carbon 14 begins to decay (nitrogen does not decay so compare remaining carbon to nitrogen. : fluctuations in atmospheric carbon (this is called offset). C14 dates do not equal calendar years for certain periods f time. Radiocarbon calibration curve was established using dendrochronology. Dates reported was cal bp: what we should know about radiocarbon dating.
