My old professor said to always trust the pottery, but a dig in Turkey proved him wrong

We were working on a site near Antalya last fall, and the ceramic typology clearly pointed to a 12th century Byzantine layer. However, the new grad student on our team pushed for carbon dating some charcoal we found mixed in, and it came back as 9th century, completely shifting the site's timeline. I mean, it turns out the pottery was reused or something, which I never would have guessed. Has anyone else had a standard dating method fail them like that on a project?

3 comments

3 Comments

victor2092mo ago

My buddy was working on a site in Cornwall a few years back. They had a whole set of Roman coins that should have dated the layer to the 3rd century. But then they found animal bones right with them that carbon dated to the early medieval period, like the 6th century. It was a real head scratcher until they figured out the later settlers had dug a pit and accidentally mixed in the older coins. It made a mess of their initial report.

ryantorres2mo ago

But what if the carbon dating was wrong? Those animal bones could have been from an older herd that just lived longer, or the sample got messed up in the lab. Maybe the coins were actually kept and used way later than we think, like family heirlooms or something. It feels too easy to just blame it on a mixed up pit when the evidence was sitting right together.

the_miles2mo ago

Lol @ryantorres, you're really out here trying to rewrite the whole report. "Older herd that lived longer" sounds like the plot of a weird animal fantasy novel. Sometimes a mixed up pit is just a mixed up pit, my guy.