Word: radiocarbon
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...custodian, made it plain that this was most likely the place where Leif set up camp. Among the artifacts turned up: loom weights, another spindle whorl, a bone needle, jasper fire starters, pollen, seeds, butternuts and, most important, about 2,000 scraps of worked wood that were subsequently radiocarbon dated to between 980 and 1020--just when Leif visited Vinland...
...Radiocarbon dating and other techniques indicate the campsite was occupied as long as 5,000 years before the Clovis culture appeared. Calling the results "unequivocal," McAvoy says they should "terminate the debate over whether Clovis was first or not." The Meadowcroft rock shelter's chief investigator, archaeologist James Adovasio of Mercyhurst College in Erie, Pa., agrees. "This is another indication that people were running around North America earlier than 13,000 years ago," he says...
...chemist Willard Libby develops radiocarbon dating, which can determine the age of objects made of organic materials, such as wood and bone
...DECEPTIVE COAT OF VARNISH? One challenge to the radiocarbon dating that has received a good deal of publicity is that of Dr. Leoncio Garza-Valdes, a San Antonio, Texas, pediatrician with interests in microbiology and archaeology. In 1983, while examining a Mayan jade artifact that art experts claimed was a recent forgery, Garza-Valdes discovered that it was covered by a lacquer-like coating produced by bacteria. Since it also had traces of ancient blood on it that should have been datable by the radiocarbon method, he took it to the University of Arizona dating lab, where scientists scraped...
...Health Science Center at San Antonio, Garza-Valdes determined that the coating was embedded with "coccal-shaped bacteria and filamentous mold-like organisms." In some places, the coating increased the diameter of the fibers as much as 60%--which the two scientists say could be enough to skew the radiocarbon dating by 1,300 years. What is more, this coating--which is transparent and thus invisible to the naked eye--cannot be removed by the conventional cleaning methods of most radiocarbon labs. Properly cleaned, says Mattingly, "I think you'd find out the [shroud's] linen is much older, though...