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‘Transition Dating’ – a Heuristic Mathematical Approach to the Collation of Radiocarbon Dates from Stratified Sequences

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2016

Ilan Sharon
Ilan Sharon*
Affiliation:
Institute of Archaeology, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Mount Scopus, Jerusalem 91905, Israel. Email: sharon@h2.hum.huji.ac.il.
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Abstract

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A heuristic approach, nicknamed “transition dating,” was used to date sequences of early Iron Age contexts using a series of 14C determinations. The basic principles of transition dating are simple and intuitive: 1) attempt to date transitions between periods, phases, etc. rather than the phases themselves, and 2) the most plausible date for that transition is one that is later than the dates from contexts preceding it, and is still earlier than the dates succeeding it. Hypotheses regarding the actual date of each transition may be evaluated using an appropriate loss function. These loss functions can also be adjusted or weighted by the user to account differentially for the various factors causing the distortion or “fuzz” in the dates.

Type
II. Getting More from the Data
Information
Radiocarbon , Volume 43 , Issue 2A: Proceedings of the 17th International Radiocarbon Conference (Part 1 of 3) , 2001 , pp. 345 - 354
Copyright
Copyright © The Arizona Board of Regents on behalf of the University of Arizona 

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