ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the underlying principles of dating and how the more common techniques work. It also identifies examples where specific techniques are appropriate for particular situ - ations. Archaeologists have used many different techniques to work out the age of artefacts and sites for which they have no historical dates. These dating techniques can be broadly sub - divided into two groups:
n Relative dating techniques, which identify the order in which sites or artefacts were used in a sequence from earliest to latest. These are
based on an understanding of stratigraphy ( p. 52). Using the ‘Law of superposition’, a deposit and anything within it is younger than the deposit below it and older than the deposit above it. You can arrange them in order but you do not know the actual dates. Cross-dating, derived from geology, involves com paring the stratigraphy of different sites or parts of a large site to relatively date layers within the local sequence.
