ABSTRACT
During an introduction to one of my archaeology classes several years ago, I handed out the syllabus and asked if there were any questions. A student raised his hand and said: “It says here we’re gonna do dating techniques. Does that mean we’re gonna learn how ta pick up chicks?” No, sorry. Hope you weren’t thinking that yourself. Dating here means assigning an age to an archaeological deposit or artifact, not . . . well, not “picking up chicks” anyway. Why is assigning an age to archaeological material important? Basically because it is a key part of maintaining context. We use excavation and recordkeeping to record and maintain the context between and among archaeological materials in space. Dating archaeological materials allows us to establish and maintain context in time. So, archaeological dating establishes the temporal context between and among artifacts, ecofacts, and features. Archaeologists typically define two primary forms of archaeological dating: relative and absolute. Let’s take a close look at both.
