Quaternary Dating Methods
by Mike Walker · Wiley
Undergraduate textbook surveying dating across radiometric methods, incremental methods including dendrochronology and varve counting, relative dating, and age-equivalence techniques such as tephrochronology. Gives the physical basis, sample requirements and error sources of each with minimal mathematics.
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The Archaeological Institute of America’s website offers archaeology news and feature articles (from Archaeology Magazine), plus teaching resources, fieldwork updates, and professional opportunities such as grants, fellowships, and events.
Radiocarbon Dating: An Archaeological Perspective, 2nd Edition
Standard reference on radiocarbon in archaeology: measurement principles, AMS instrumentation, sample chemistry, and the systematic sources of anomalous dates and how they are resolved, followed by critical assessment of 14C chronologies across Old and New World prehistory.
OxCal: Radiocarbon Calibration and Bayesian Chronological Analysis
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Radiocarbon Dating and Chronological Modelling: Guidelines and Best Practice
Free Historic England guidance covering radiocarbon principles, measurement, calibration and reservoir effects, then Bayesian chronological modelling end to end. Seven worked case studies walk through sample selection, model building, validation and reporting on real excavations and standing buildings. The single best free document on this topic. It is the operational standard for how radiocarbon programmes are designed, modelled and reported in British archaeology, and the only place a learner gets the full Bayesian workflow (problem definition, simulation-driven sample selection, model validation) rather than an isolated explanation of half-lives.
Seriation, Stratigraphy, and Index Fossils
Monograph tracing how early twentieth-century Americanist archaeologists built chronologies from seriation, stratigraphic excavation and index fossils. Explains the logic, assumptions and limits of each relative-dating method, so readers can evaluate how culture-historical sequences were constructed and why they still matter.