Re: [asa] Plot of radiometric dates

Kirk Bertsche gave an excellent talk at our annual meeting at GFU on
radiocarbon dating. The audio is on our website as well as the slides. For
your convenience the link to the slides is here:
http://www.asa3.org/ASA/meetings/georgefox2008/papers/ASA2008Bertsche.pdf

A full calibration curve can be found here:
http://radiocarbon.ldeo.columbia.edu/cgi-bin/radcarbcfig

No discontinuities.

Randy

----- Original Message -----
From: "David Campbell" <pleuronaia@gmail.com>
To: <asa@calvin.edu>
Sent: Thursday, October 30, 2008 1:04 PM
Subject: Re: [asa] Plot of radiometric dates

> The latest PNAS has an article on 14C dating of archaeological
> material from Jordan that confirms major metalworking and other
> activity around the 10th century BC, in agreement with the picture of
> Edom in the OT and in conflict with the dating advocated by
> Finklestein et. al., not to mention the folks who are in complete
> denial of OT historicity. Similar 14C studies on sites smashed by
> Shishak (I Ki 14:25), on Hezekiah's tunnel, and on the Dead Sea
> Scrolls all support Biblical chronology against radical
> reinterpretation or dismissal (the fact that major parts of the Qumran
> material date over a century BC rules out the idea, already ridiculous
> on exegetical and historical grounds, that they depict a rivalry in
> the early church with Paul as the bad guy).
>
> Levy et al. (2008. High-precision radiocarbon dating and historical
> biblical archaeology in southern Jordan, PNAS 105(43):16460-16465.
>
> I don't think there's any odd jump in dates around 2500 BC, though 14C
> does have some ups and downs (based on the level of solar activity,
> etc.) There was a claim of a bit of a spike rather further back,
> about 75000 BC, in samples that ought to be very marginal for 14C,
> suggested as reflecting some cosmic energy burst like a nearby
> supernova, but I don't know whether that claim has held up well. It
> was younger than expected dates rather than a jump to millions of
> years, so it's unlikely to be the root of the claim.
>
> Different radioisotopes have all sorts of half lives, though of course
> there has to be a source for short-lived ones (like 14C) for them to
> be around naturally and giving useful information on earth. Careful
> measurement of some of the uranium isotopes can give useful ages on
> tens of thousands of years. There are all sorts of other dating
> methods that fill in the gap, too, such as varves, Milankovitch
> cycles, dendrochronology, stable isotope shifts, magnetic reversals,
> index fossils, ...
>
> --
> Dr. David Campbell
> 425 Scientific Collections
> University of Alabama
> "I think of my happy condition, surrounded by acres of clams"
>
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Received on Mon Nov 3 11:56:45 2008