AMS radiocarbon dating
Definition
Accelerator Mass Spectrometry measurement of the ratio of carbon-14 to carbon-12 in a sample. It requires milligram-scale samples and produces a raw radiocarbon age that must be calibrated against a reference curve (IntCal20) to yield a calendar-year range.
Related terms
- Bomb-pulse dating
- Use of the post-1952 atmospheric 14C spike, produced by nuclear weapons testing, to date biological tissues formed since 1950. Because the spike...
- Calibration curve
- A plot of instrument response (peak area, absorbance, intensity) against analyte concentration, built from five to seven standards spanning the expected case...
- Dendrochronology
- The science of dating by tree-ring sequences. Each annual ring encodes the growing conditions of that year; matching ring patterns to a...
- OSL (Optically Stimulated Luminescence)
- A dating method that measures the accumulated radiation dose stored in mineral grains (usually quartz or feldspar) since they were last exposed...
- Terminus post quem (TPQ)
- Latin for 'limit after which.' The date of the youngest datable item in a context sets the earliest possible date for the...
Explained in
- Radiocarbon and Other Dating MethodsAccelerator Mass Spectrometry measurement of the ratio of carbon-14 to carbon-12 in a sample. It requires milligram-scale samples and produces a raw radiocarbo...