Abstract
A survey is made of the advantages and disadvantages of the various types of plant material that may be used in radiocarbon dating. Annual crops and individual tree rings allow yearly fluctuations in atmospheric radiocarbon concentration to be followed, and co-ordination with dendrochronology affords an extremely powerful means of refining carbon dating, testing the hypotheses on which it rests, and extending its applications into palaeoclimatology. Peat mires are shown to have great advantages for co-ordinated research involving carbon dating alongside pollen-analysis and other fields of Quaternary research. They require use with circumspection, however, a qualification applying at least as strongly to the organic muds of lakes, where allochthonous origin, mixing, and above all the incorporation of ancient carbon by the “hard-water error” have to be reckoned with. Marine plant material suffers these drawbacks to an even greater extent. Finally it is emphasized that misassociation of an event and the plant material to be dated involves an error outside rectification by the dating laboratory; such misassociation is exceedingly wasteful and can only be avoided by painstaking and informed field work.
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