The basics of radiocarbon dating is a topic well covered on a multitude of websites. Check out any of these resources for coverage of this topic.
- The University of Waikato, New Zealand has a compilation of information on radiocarbon dating, history, calculations and other dating basics.
- American Chemical Society's summary of the history of radiocarbon.
- A brief introduction to the science of radiocarbon dating from the National Ocean Sciences Accelerator Mass Spectrometry group.
- Environmentalscience.org gives a broader overview of radiocarbon dating and its application.
- The Canadian Archaeological Radiocarbon Database gives more detail on how data is processed and some information on sources of uncertainty.
- The Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit gives basic background on radiocarbon date calibration.
Here are some fun videos and a podcast on radiocarbon:
- A short illustration of radiocarbon formation and decay by Scientific American.
- GNS Science, New Zealand shows you the inside of a radiocarbon lab, and takes you through the sample pretreatment process.
- Radiolab recently did a portion of an episode on radiocarbon and its application to dating human tissues.
Do you have other resources you'd like to see here? Contact us to suggest content.