Slashdot Mirror
Physics and Archaeology
Guinnessy writes: "In 1960 Willard Frank Libby won a Nobel Prize for his work on radiocarbon dating, a technique that truly revolutionize archaeology. Now Physics Today magazine has an article describing how new methods are yielding more accurate dates for our prehistoric ancestors, profoundly affecting our understanding of the past. Neat stuff."
First paragraph in the article... and already they've lost my (suspension of dis)belief....
a cadia.asx
==> Traditional archaeology has not been a field that suffers science easily. Only gradually have archaeologists accepted physics as a tool for archaeological research. Perhaps as a result, the physicists who work in archaeology, their methods, and their theories, are neither well known nor numerous. Archaeometry, as the wider field of scientific archaeology is known, has no Heisenbergs or Einsteins, uncertainty principles or relativity theories. The only physical discovery to truly revolutionize archaeology has been radiocarbon dating.
Physicists have developped ground-based RADAR technology and Echo-location technologies which are having a profound impact on the archaeological world.
Take a look at: http://www.exn.ca/inc/demo.asp?Video=exn20011009-
(Windows media player format, sorry.)
These RADAR/SONAR devices have drastically reduced the time it takes to locate archaeological sites, and yet they don't even mention it until the end of the article. After having clearly stated that "The only physical discovery to truly revolutionize archaeology has been radiocarbon dating."
If you believe everything you read, you'd better not read. - Japanese proverb