Ancient clay has internal clock

BBC ^ | Wednesday, May 20, 2009 | unattributed

[SunkenCiv]

Fired clay ceramics start to react chemically with atmospheric moisture as soon as it is removed from the kiln. Researchers believe they can pinpoint the precise age of materials like brick, tile and pottery by calculating how much its weight has changed. The team from Edinburgh and Manchester universities hope the method will prove as significant as radiocarbon dating... Radiocarbon dating, used for bone or wood, cannot be used for ceramic material because it does not contain carbon... He and his team, from the universities of Edinburgh and Manchester and the Museum of London, were able to date brick samples from Roman, medieval and modern periods with remarkable accuracy. They have established that their technique can be used to determine the age of objects up to 2,000 years old but believe it has the potential to be used to date samples around 10,000 years old. Researchers are now planning to look at whether the new dating technique can be applied to earthenware, bone china and porcelain... They have calculated that a Roman brick sample with a known age of about 2,000 years was 2,001 years old. A further sample with a known age of between 708 and 758 years was calculated to have an age of 748 years. The researchers also tested a 'mystery brick', with the real age only revealed to them once they had completed their process. The known age was between 339 and 344 years - and the new technique suggested the brick was 340 years old. The team also found that ceramic objects have their internal date clocks reset if they are exposed to temperatures of 500C.

[SunkenCiv]

The method means material such as Roman pottery can be precisley dated

[SunkenCiv]

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[JoeProBono]

[loungitude]

At first glance, I thought “that’s BS”. Then I read the article. You decide.

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Dr Moira Wilson from Manchester University led the research. She said the technique could also be “turned on its head and used to establish the mean temperature of a material over its lifetime”.

“If a precise date of firing were known, this could potentially be useful in climate change studies.”

[smokingfrog]

Interesting. Think it will it work on that ash tray I made in second grade?

[SunkenCiv]

It’s an alternative to thermoluminescence, but I doubt that it will prove to be as accurate, ever. Too easy to fool, and too susceptible to divergent assumptions about the samples and whatnot.