Debated between carbon dating and tree rings for a Viking site in Greenland...

I went with tree rings for dating that Norse farm near Brattahlid because carbon dating has a wider margin of error for that period. Paid off when the rings matched up to a known volcanic eruption in 986 AD exactly. Has anyone else had better luck with one method over the other on older sites?

2 comments

2 Comments

kevin21828d ago

Ha, I once tried carbon dating on a piece of hearth charcoal from a medieval site and got a date range so wide it could have been either Viking times or the Industrial Revolution! Tree rings saved my bacon too when I was working on a shipwreck timber from the 9th century. The carbon had a 50 year margin that put it anywhere from 820 to 870 AD, but the rings matched a known drought pattern exactly to 845. Seems like if you've got intact wood, rings beat carbon every time for precise years. You ever run into a site where one method totally failed and the other saved the whole project?

fiona_clark28d ago

Buddy of mine had charcoal from a kiln site, carbon dating said Roman era, tree rings proved it was medieval.