Material evidence: learning from archaeological practice

Radiocarbon dating was a revolution, which entirely restructured the practice and understanding of prehistoric archaeology around the world, it provided an independent universal timeframe. The need for a secure known-age record of atmospheric 14C ages was clear, and the obvious source was known-age tree-rings. The tree-ring calibration of the 14C timescale became the second radiocarbon revolution. The second radiocarbon revolution highlighted a temporal disconnect with the east Mediterranean-Egypt-Near East region, and so exacerbated the growing method-theory divide between much classical and Near Eastern archaeology. Neither the precision of the 14C calibration curve, nor the accuracy and precision of 14C measurements on archaeological samples, nor the relatively restricted availability of suitable large samples permitted finegrained issues to be settled. In addition to an increasingly refined, accurate and precise 14C calibration curve, the 1980s saw the advent of accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) dating. The large sample requirements usually meant dating large charcoal samples from archaeological sites, and inevitably this meant dating tree-rings.