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Revolutionary new method for dating pottery sheds new light on prehistoric past

Researchers in the UK have created a new way of dating dating artefacts that involves heating ancient pots to unlock their internal clocks. The relatively simple technique could become as important for dating ceramics as carbon dating is for organic materials, say the researchers at the Universities of Manchester and Edinburgh. The team has already dated ceramics from the Roman, medieval and modern periods to a high degree of accuracy, and they are now looking to establish a global research facility for the technique.

The method relies on the fact that fired clay ceramics — like bricks, tile and pottery — start to chemically combine with water as soon as they are exposed to the atmosphere. A big breakthrough came in when the researchers realized that this process has occurred at a predictable rate throughout history, related to temperatures.

Now the researchers have turned their theory into a practical dating method and present their findings in Proceedings of the Royal Society A. Wilson was quick to point out that the water uptake in rehydroxlation is not the same as absorption — it is a much slower chemical process. Pottery dating procedure involves measuring the mass of a sample of ceramic and then heating it to around degrees Celsius in a furnace, which removes dating water.

The re-fired ceramic is then weighed immediately, using a highly accurate microbalance, to determine precisely the dating of water recombination. Once the rate is known, the age of the artefact can be extrapolated. The researchers dated a Roman brick, known to beas years old. An interesting thing occurred when they tested their technique on a medieval brick from Canterbury: after repeated testing dated it at 66 years, they realized that the intense heat generated during a Second World War blitz had re-fired the brick and effectively reset its clock.

Extracting Pottery Residue for Radiocarbon Dating

At present, the most widely used alternative technique is thermoluminescence, which involves measuring the amount of light given off by a sample because this is related to the dose of radiation an artefact has received across its lifetime.

One of the limitations is that it requires a lot of extra information about the archaeological site such as radiation levels, which may not be accessible if artefacts have already been sitting in a museum for many years.

Perhaps the most significant feature of this new water-based technique is that — as with radiocarbon dating — it is self-calibrating, based on rehydroxylation alone. However, Bailiff is a pottery sceptical about the reliability of historic temperature records.

Carbon Dating Cost

The researchers are now planning to test whether their dating technique can be applied to earthenware, bone china and porcelain. Wilson told physicsworld. She believes this situation will improve if her team can establish an international research centre in the UK — she is currently looking into ways of achieving this. Note: The verification e-mail to complete your account registration should arrive immediately.

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Registration complete. Soft matter and liquids Dating update Archaeological dating by re-firing ancient pots 08 Jun James Dacey. Want to read more? Pottery is free, quick and easy Note: The verification e-mail to complete your account registration should pottery immediately.

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Dating pottery

Revolutionary new method for dating pottery sheds new light on prehistoric past

Extracting Pottery Residue for Radiocarbon Dating

Carbon Dating Cost

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