Chemical clocks for archaeological artefacts
Radiocarbon dating is a standard technique, but what if your artefacts are inorganic? Rachel Brazil finds out how to accurately age pottery and even metals
Dating archaeological finds still routinely relies on typology and stratigraphy – what an artefact looks like and the context in which it was found. The introduction of radiocarbon dating in the post-war years provided a route to direct dating for organic material, but there are still few dating option for inorganic materials such as ceramics and metals. In recent years several pioneering groups have been developing new approaches, based on chemical changes that can predictably mark time.