ABSTRACT
In the 1980s, graduate students in archaeology at the University of California–Riverside had the advantage of there being a radiocarbon laboratory in the anthropology department. Archaeologists view the past as a sequence of temporal events that constitutes a chronology. Archaeologists adopted the concept of the index fossil and applied it to artifact types that appeared to be commonplace only during specific periods. Research and refinements have made radiocarbon dating an indispensable technique in modern archaeology. Temporal types tie archaeological finds to periods when certain artifacts, features, or sites are known to have been made. Archaeomagnetism dates objects and events by linking them to known-age shifts in Earth’s magnetic poles. Even so, potassium-argon dating remains the best available method for determining the age of the earliest archaeological sites. Nevertheless, radiocarbon dating stands as one of the most useful, relatively inexpensive, and accurate dating methods available to archaeologists today.
