The Beginnings of Radiocarbon Dating in American Antiquity: A Historical Perspective

Abstract

Few archaeologists would dispute the suggestion that the introduction of 14C dating into archaeological research has had a profound influence on the way in which prehistoric studies are conducted. Glyn Daniel, for example, has gone so far as to rank the development of the 14C method in the twentieth-century with the discovery of the antiquity of the human species in the nineteenth-century (Daniel 1967:266). Despite the widespread acknowledgment of the significant role played by the 14C method in contemporary archaeological investigations, no comprehensive, critical, historical review of the specific intellectual history and substantive characteristics of this impact, particularly in American archaeology, has been published.