Dating Techniques

Dating is nothing more than ordering time. Time is the quintessential sorter of events. All living beings go through life being on occasion acutely aware of its transient yet eternal, ceaseless yet tenacious quality. Time is the omnipresent judge that indicts all life for existence and condemns it to death. Thus, for the greatest portion of human history, time was seen in terms of an individual or series of lifetimes, with a clear beginning and a clear end. This view of the world applied as much to the wonders of nature as it did to the human being, with such phenomena as the rising and setting of the sun, the moon, and important stars and the passing of the seasons. The ancient Egyptian proverb,“All things fear time; but time fears the pyramids” summarizes the essence of time's role in human history. Time has always been an enigma somehow understandable to the individual but incomprehensible and unexplainable to others. With the advent of high civilization, time was ordered by the actions of leaders, and a number of king's lists have survived in the written record to assist the modern scholar in the very difficult task of attaching dates to events of the near-distant past.

This ordering of time throughout the ages serves a purpose, to answer the question: “What is the age?” Or, “How old is it?” In anthropological research, time [Page 702]has always been the great sorting mechanism. Collectors and travelers of classical times, such as Herodotus, studied historic monuments and produced speculative accounts of prehistory. In fact, several dozen classical authors in the first millennium BC ordered time as a succession of ages based on technological progress. A three-age system encompassing the Stone, Bronze, and Iron Ages was the most common time-sorting methodology, but there were variations with copper and gold. Lucretius (95–53 BC) summarized these Western views of dating the past. Yuan K'ang (ca. AD 50), a Han Dynasty Chinese scholar, wrote an account of the historical development of toolmaking, from the use of stone/jade through bronze to iron.

The principle of a systematic organization of ex situ archaeological materials started with the understanding of the three-age system in the16th century by Michael Mercati (1541–1593), who was the superintendent of the Vatican gardens and adviser to Pope Clement VIII. The combination of his Renaissance education, his substantial mineral and fossil collections, and his access to the newly acquired American ethnographic artifact collections permitted Mercati to formulate the foundations of modern archaeology. His observations, which were not easily accessible until the 18th century, are all the more remarkable when one considers the intellectual milieu of that era. In Europe during this era, inquiry into the prehistoric past was discouraged, because the Bible was regarded as the supreme authority on human history and the early history of the earth. For example, creationism dominated scholarly writings on the origin of the universe and humanity, and during this period, fossils of marine organisms that were sometimes found in mountains were described as being washed up by the Great Flood. Ancient arrow points and other prehistoric stone tools were thought to have been produced by thunderbolts and other natural phenomena. Prehistoric stone arrow points and axes were believed to have fallen from the sky at the moment when thunder stuck. These implements were called thunder-stones,ceraunia, or pierre de foudre.

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