Week 3 - Dating Techniques

Question 1

What is Tephrocronology?

Answer 1

Volcanic ash

Question 2

Why is tephrochronology a good dating technique?

Answer 2

Because volcanic Ash has a unique chemical fingerprint (even different eruptions from the same volcano are chemically different)

Question 3

What can Argon-Argon dating reveal?

Answer 3

When an archive is dated and it is also found in a second archive, you know know absolute age and you don’t need to date it

Question 4

What uncertainties are there in dating methods?

Answer 4

Very rarely gives you exact year:
Ice cores are within a few decades
Radiocarbon dates are within a few hundred years

Question 5

What is the difference between accuracy and precision?

Answer 5

Accuracy - the closeness to the correct value

Precision - the reproducibility of the measurements (is it giving exact or variations in number?)

Question 6

How do you decide on which dating tehnique to use?

Answer 6

Will depend on what material is available to date