Radiocarbon dating of recent water samples, aquatic plants, and animals, shows that age differences of up to 2000 14C years can occur within one river. The freshwater reservoir effect has also implications for radiocarbon dating of Mesolithic pottery from inland sites of the Ertebølle culture in Northern Germany.Radiocarbon dating of recent water samples, aquatic plants, and animals, shows that age differences of up to 2000 14C years can occur within one river. The freshwater reservoir effect

What can you not carbon date?

For radiocarbon dating to be possible, the material must once have been part of a living organism. This means that things like stone, metal and pottery cannot usually be directly dated by this means unless there is some organic material embedded or left as a residue.

Can you carbon date something living?

No. Carbon dating works because we are constantly consuming sources of carbon with carbon-14 while we are alive, replenishing the relatively higher ratio of this isotope to its non-decaying peers, carbon-12 and -13. When we die, we are no longer replenishing that, and it begins to decay.

How far off is carbon dating?

As a rule, carbon dates are younger than calendar dates: a bone carbon-dated to 10,000 years is around 11,000 years old, and 20,000 carbon years roughly equates to 24,000 calendar years. The problem, says Bronk Ramsey, is that tree rings provide a direct record that only goes as far back as about 14,000 years.

How do you get carbon dating?

Radiocarbon dating: radioactive carbon decays to nitrogen with a half-life of 5730 years. In dead material, the decayed 14C is not replaced and its concentration in the object decreases slowly. To obtain a truly absolute chronology, corrections must be made, provided by measurements on samples of know age.