"Radiocarbon Dating is a unique handbook that should find its way as a standard reference for most archaeologists."--Meyer Rubin, Director, Radiocarbon Laboratory, United States Geological Survey

This volume holds a datelist of 647 radiocarbon determinations carried out between 2004 and 2007 in support of research funded by English Heritage throught the Aggregates Levy Sustainability Fund. It contains supporting information about the samples and the sites which produced them, a comprehensive bibliography, and two indexes for reference and analysis. An introduction provides information about the scientific dating undertaken, and methods used for the analyses reported. Details of technical reports available for programmes of dendrochronology, luminescence dating, and amino-acid racemization funded under this scheme are also provided. The datelist has been collated from information provided by the submitters of samples and the dating laboratories, in order to provide easy access to raw scientific and contextual data which may be used in further research. Many of the sites and projects from which dates have been obtained are in the process of publication. Full references are given to these reports for those requiring further detail.

This volume holds a datelist of radiocarbon determinations carried out between 1970 and 1982 on behalf of the Ancient Monuments Laboratory, now part of English Heritage. It also contains supporting information about the samples and the sites producing them, a comprehensive bibliography, and three indexes for reference and analysis. The datelist has been collated to give access to a large body of information which, although mostly published elsewhere, has never before been accessible in a consistent form. When these dates were produced, high-precision calibration was not possible; now that this is available all dates have been converted, thus giving archaeologists and others using radiocarbon dates the opportunity to review their dating results in the light of this calibration, and with hindsight. The indexes order the complex information contained in the datelist by HAR numbers and by true calendar dates.

This volume is a major revision and expansion of Taylor’s seminal book Radiocarbon Dating: An Archaeological Perspective. It covers the major advances and accomplishments of the 14C method in archaeology and analyzes factors that affect the accuracy and precision of 14C-based age estimates. In addition to reviewing the basic principles of the method, it examines 14C dating anomalies and means to resolve them, and considers the critical application of 14C data as a dating isotope with special emphasis on issues in Old and New World archaeology and late Quaternary paleoanthropology. This volume, again a benchmark for 14C dating, critically reflects on the method and data that underpins, in so many cases, the validity of the chronologies used to understand the prehistoric archaeological record.

This monograph makes a significant contribution to answering some long standing questions in the Later Stone Age prehistory of southern Africa and to archaeological methods in general. The Vredenburg Peninsula Survey project originally set out to confirm that the first herders at the south-western Cape were immigrant Khoekhoe-speakers who had migrated from farther north about two thousand years ago. It failed to find evidence to support this hypothesis and instead ended up making a solid contribution to documenting the regional transition from formal, microlithic technology to the informal stone tool repertoire that marks the immediately Pre-Colonial period. It also throws light on another regional question concerning the rise and fall of stone adze technology. Its contribution to survey methodology is of worldwide importance and this is the first time an archaeologist has gambled on dating surface shell on a large scale and it has paid off handsomely. Coastal archaeologists on all continents should take note of this, and be rightly encouraged.

Over the past several years, a number of Levantine archaeologists working on the Iron Age (ca. 1200 - 586 BCE) have begun to employ high precision radiocarbon dating to solve a wide range of chronological, historical and social issues. The incorporation of high precision radiocarbon dating methods and statistical modelling into the archaeological 'tool box' of the 'Biblical archaeologist' is revolutionizing the field. In fact, Biblical archaeology is leading the field of world archaeology in how archaeologists must deal with history, historical texts, and material culture. A great deal of debate has been generated by this new research direction in southern Levantine (Israel, Jordan, Palestinian territories, southern Lebanon & Syria, the Sinai) archaeology. This book takes the pulse of how archaeology, science-based research methods and the Bible interface at the beginning of the 21st century and brings together a leading team of archaeologists, Egyptologists, Biblical scholars, radiocarbon dating specialists and other researchers who have embraced radiocarbon dating as a significant tool to test hypotheses concerning the historicity of aspects of the Old Testament or Hebrew Bible. As this book "raises the bar" in how archaeologists tackle historical issues as manifest in the interplay between the archaeological record and text, its interest will go well beyond the 'Holy Land.'