First 20 Years Of Radiocarbon Dating Literature

Although the technique of radiocarbon dating has been established and used as a research tool in a variety of fields since the late 1940s, no serious effort has been made to compile a comprehensive annotated bibliography of the literature devoted to radiocarbon dating and its applications. This is partly due to the multi-disciplinary aspect of the topic causing indexing of radiocarbon dating literature to be scattered in a variety of abstracting services and scientific fields and also partly due to the rapid and constant growth of the literature. This makes searching for literature on the general topic of radiocarbon dating a very cumbersome task. Radiocarbon dating appears as an indexed subject only since 1965, however current literature shows that early works are still widely referred to, indicating their importance as foundation and framework for new research. Thus the selected range of the bibliography, 1947-1968, fills the gap not covered by indexing services or computer information retrieval. This bibliography lists over 2800 articles (in the English language), and the bibliography is divided into 14 chapters. Within the chapters, the entries are in alphabetical order by title. The bibliography also has three indexes which offer access to material by author, subject, and geographical names.

This volume is a major revision and expansion of Taylor’s seminal book Radiocarbon Dating: An Archaeological Perspective. It covers the major advances and accomplishments of the 14C method in archaeology and analyzes factors that affect the accuracy and precision of 14C-based age estimates. In addition to reviewing the basic principles of the method, it examines 14C dating anomalies and means to resolve them, and considers the critical application of 14C data as a dating isotope with special emphasis on issues in Old and New World archaeology and late Quaternary paleoanthropology. This volume, again a benchmark for 14C dating, critically reflects on the method and data that underpins, in so many cases, the validity of the chronologies used to understand the prehistoric archaeological record.

This volume is a major revision and expansion of Taylor’s seminal book Radiocarbon Dating: An Archaeological Perspective. It covers the major advances and accomplishments of the 14C method in archaeology and analyzes factors that affect the accuracy and precision of 14C-based age estimates. In addition to reviewing the basic principles of the method, it examines 14C dating anomalies and means to resolve them, and considers the critical application of 14C data as a dating isotope with special emphasis on issues in Old and New World archaeology and late Quaternary paleoanthropology. This volume, again a benchmark for 14C dating, critically reflects on the method and data that underpins, in so many cases, the validity of the chronologies used to understand the prehistoric archaeological record.

"Radiocarbon Dating is a unique handbook that should find its way as a standard reference for most archaeologists."--Meyer Rubin, Director, Radiocarbon Laboratory, United States Geological Survey