Boiling and burning fish stews onto ceramics. Image: Bente Philippsen
Posted on 02/24/2015 2:46:06 AM PST by SunkenCiv
Hard water contains less Carbon-14 than the atmosphere, because dissolved carbonates are Carbon-14 free. A fish caught in hard water has thus a higher Carbon-14 age than contemporaneous terrestrial samples. If such a fish is then cooked in a ceramic pot, the radiocarbon age of the food crust will be higher than if a terrestrial animal was cooked in the pot.
This is known as the “reservoir effect” because the fish’s carbon actually comes from another “reservoir” than the carbon in terrestrial animals from the surrounding area. “Reservoir age” is the difference between the true age and the Carbon-14 date...
On examining freshly caught fish from the River Trave the results revealed not only a large reservoir effect, but also a dramatic variance from between 500 to 2100 years. In effect, this means that some of the fish swimming in the Trave today seem to be over 2000 years old, when radiocarbon dated...
It is worth noting that even charcoal from a camp fire could be another error source – the “old wood effect”: where the charcoal dated might be from the innermost ring of a 500-year-old tree which was felled 100 years before it finally ended up in the camp fire. Knowing what might cause an error is vital when it comes to dating...
The group, after making their own pots, boiled up the various ingredients – including a freshly caught fish with a Carbon-14 age of 700 years. They then succeeded in burning the meal onto the pot fabric, which was then taken for dating.
Even though the food crust was made only weeks before, Carbon-14 dating returned a 14th century date and thus provided evidence that food crusts on pottery take on the same age as the ingredients.
(Excerpt) Read more at pasthorizonspr.com ...
Boiling and burning fish stews onto ceramics. Image: Bente Philippsen
Maybe so mouthwash would help.
... as well as knowing IF that 'what might cause' ... has actually occurred.
Wouldn't James Taranto headline this "The Lonely Lives of Archaelogists"?
LOL
Bravo that someone challenged this scientific process and showed its flaws. Too many scientists are lazy and blindly accept “proven” testing methods as infallible. Physicist Richard Feynman regular challenged accepted truths like this. For example, he found that the popular rat maze experiment process has holes... the construction of the maze would affect the sound of the rats footsteps in certain parts of the maze and the rats were able to use that sound to navigate.
Excellent example of the fact that there is NO SETTLED SCIENCE! If we can find flaws like this in small mundane processes, how can anyone say that the global climate theories are settled science?
I sure someone out there digs the idea of dating an archaeologist.
Any archeologist I’ve ever met couldn’t get a date...fish diet or not.
I’ve seen a few I wouldn’t mind excavating.
A New Way to Date Old Ceramics
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/2659498/posts
We learned that seals were coming to a bad end and being mummified by nature in Antarctica in 1200 A.D. That was interesting and we wondered what was happening in Antarctica at that time...one of the technicians... noticed that a seal carcass that he himself had shot for dog-meat and that got left out through the winter... [looked] just like the mummified seals that they had been sending in. So without telling too many people what he was doing, he sent this mummified seal to be carbon-dated and do you know it was dated to 1200 A.D., and he had shot it the year before. When that was made public it really caused a storm...
So I guess that archaeologists are now working on correction factors to calibrate the carbon-dated age of sea fish, river fish, and wood.
That image is pretty disgusting, btw. If that is a stew, I don’t think I would eat it.
LOL! Good one.
They should try oysters instead of fish.
How much of the tax payers money went into this “highly important” study?
Do I really care what diet an archaeologist consumes or if he/she gets a date? Another really high priority for all of us to “digest” (sorry couldn’t resist that word).
Sorry Freepers. I’m in a pissy mood today having read so many highly important articles.
I've always had problems dating archaeologists after eating fish. :-P
hmmm. Gives more credence to replicating data.
That’s a fine kett- uh, never mind.
Some would be found in a sift.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
