Scientists from the Universities of Edinburgh and Manchester have developed a new technique called rehydroxylation that will be able to help accurately date ceramics. The BBC News reports that:
“Fired clay ceramics start to react chemically with atmospheric moisture as soon as it is removed from the kiln. Researchers believe they can pinpoint the precise age of materials like brick, tile and pottery by calculating how much its weight has changed.”
So far they have been able to accurately determine the age of objects dating up to 2,000 years old, but believe that in time, it has the potential to be used on objects dating as far back as 10,000 years old.
“A new way of dating archaeological objects has been found, using water to unlock their “internal clocks”. This new technique could allow us to discover a great deal about ancient artefacts by pinpointing their age and, as we have shown in our experiments, it is also useful in determining the age of modern materials.
We believe the method will become standard practice.
While… its accuracy would need to be validated many times… it is much cheaper and simpler than current available methods.”
You can read the whole BBC News report here.
Science Blog is also covering the story and you can read their report here.
Sometimes I read things like this and think ‘why didn’t we think of this sooner?” Everything in its time I guess. Very cool stuff though. Thanks for posting it.