th the atmosphere and living organisms. (Renfrew, 1973) Through the death of an organism, the spontaneous decay of C-14 takes place. Through Beta Radiation, a beta particle or electron, is emitted form the C-14 atom, allowing this atom to regress to its original nitrogen form. (Bowman, 1990)This decay process itself allows the remaining radiocarbon in the sample to be detected and estimated, since the intensity of beta radiation produced is dependent on the amount of carbon-14 present. The more atoms of Carbon-14 there are, the more disintegrations will occur in a given time, giving off the electrons whose emission is detected in the laboratory (pg. 258 Renfrew, 1973). A feature of the radioactive decay process is that each isotope of each element decays at a specific rate. The radioactive decay of C-14 follows the principal of half-life. The half-life (T1/2) is the mount of time necessary for 1/2 of the radioactive material to decay. (Bowman, 1990) During the beginning years of radiocarbon dating the T1/2 was determined to have been 5560 +/- 30 years this was known as Libbys Half-life. (Libby, 1955) This T1/2 was change to a more accurate number of a half-life of 5730 years +/- 30 years. (Renfrew, 1973) Figure 2, shows the T1/2 of C-14. The short half-life of C-14 makes this dating technique available for samples of 70,000 years or younger. The amount of C-14 at that moment is too insignificant to be measured. (Renfrew, 1973)There is good evidence, however, that the production of carbons 14 and thus the ration of C-14 to C-12 has varied somewhat over the past several thousand years. This creates a problem in C-14 dating because C-14 dating rest on the assumption that the concentration of C-14 in time is a constant. (Bowman, 1990) The use of dendrochronology offered a way to mitigate this inaccuracy. It helped verity the dates acquired by C-14 dating. Dendrochronology is the method of using tree rings for dating. This method en...
