Dating
As a dating or dating methods are referred to the period from the occurrence or use of archaeological , paleontological and geological discoveries or historical documents and art historical objects such as paintings or sculptures determined. The various dating methods are suitable for determining the age within a limited time range. In many cases, the points in time obtained from one dating method are used to calibrate or calibrate another.
Objects
Are dated:
- Works of art
- Documents, see document review
- archaeological finds, see age determination (archeology)
- fossil trees as well as historical wood with the help of dendrochronology , d. H. by measuring the annual rings and comparing them with comparative data from other finds and with climatic data . This enables dating to the exact year.
- Rocks, see geochronology
Methods
Depending on the type and age of the find, different methods are used:
- Scientific procedures
-
Radiometric dating . Examples:
- Radiocarbon dating (also 14 C dating) in finds up to 50,000 years old that contain organic substances
- Potassium-argon dating and uranium-lead dating in geochronology for dating very old samples.
- Tritium method for wines, water samples or water-containing finds if they are not too old
- Thermoluminescence dating of earth samples, minerals, ceramics, artifacts
- Annual periodicities count for ice cores , varves , or corals
- Marine sediment layers through oxygen isotope levels
-
Radiometric dating . Examples:
-
Stratigraphic method
- Key fossil - chronology , temporal assignment of rock layers through fossils
- Tephrochronology , temporal allocation of rock layers through the identification of pyroclastic sediments .
- Coin dating with coins as accompanying finds
- Structural analysis
- X-ray analyzes of material, structure and layering
- Paleomagnetic investigations on rocks and ceramics
- Plausibility analysis
- Watermarks , font features , ink , and type of paper are used to date documents
- Chemical-technical composition of colorants , varnishes or painting grounds in art history
- Rehydroxylation , a new study of the degree to which oxygen bonds in ceramics are broken by the ingress of water. In this way, Moira Wilson from the University of Manchester and her colleagues succeeded in pinpointing ceramic objects up to 2000 years of age.
- Archaeomagnetic dating based on the direction or strength of the magnetic field stored in the object
In addition, there is a wealth of other methods in the interdisciplinary cooperation of modern research, such as data compared with climate profiles from sediments , pollen analysis based on approaches to the distribution of recent - recently extinct (in the geological sense) plants, and others.
In archeology, especially classical archeology , and art history , historical sources and style-critical methods are also used. History studies also work for the dating of their sources, for example with methods of historical linguistics or palaeography .
See also
- Akme , a method to estimate the age of historical persons in the absence of sources.
literature
- Wagner, Günther (1996): Geological and archaeological dating - 100 years of influence of radioactivity. Geosciences, 14 (12) , 547–551, doi : 10.2312 / geoscientific . 1996.14.547
- Knut Nicolaus: DuMont's image lexicon to identify paintings . Dumont Buchverlag, Cologne 1982, ISBN 3-7701-1243-1 , p. 53 ff.
