Product Description
Radiocarbon Dating inaugurates a new series, "Interpreting the Past," published jointly by the British Museum and the University of California Press. Approaching archaeological techniques and artifacts from an interpretive viewpoint, the series looks in detail at specific classes of artifacts that have contributed most to our knowledge of the past, and at particular investigative techniques that are now being used to refine this knowledge and thereby to question previous assumptions.In Radiocarbon Dating, Sheridan Bowman provides a much-needed introduction to the complex field of carbon dating.Writing lucidly and knowledgeably, she explains the uses and quirks of radiocarbon results, illustrating them with such famous examples as Stonehenge and the Shroud of Turin. With its clear presentation of how to collect samples for radiocarbon dating, her book will be an invaluable source for all archaeologists and geologists. ... Read more

Product Description
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. This is revolutionizing traditional 'Biblical Archaeology' which over the past several decades has been viewed as parochial. The incorporation of high precision radiocarbon dating methods and statistical modeling 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. The book brings together leading 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 (hereafter, simply the Bible). Although this is an academic book that will be of great interest to Biblical scholars, archaeologists, Egyptologists, and radiocarbon specialists, the general public will also be interested because of the important issues concerning the historicity of the Bible tackled in this volume. 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.' Thomas E. Levy is Professor of Anthropology and Judaic Studies at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). Formerly, the Assistant Director of the W. F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research (one of the American Schools of Oriental Research) and the Nelson Glueck School of Biblical Archaeology of the Hebrew Union College, Jerusalem, he joined the UCSD faculty in 1992 where he has served as Chair of the Department of Anthropology and Director of the Judaic Studies Program. He has been involved with and served as a principal investigator of several major projects in the Near East including the Jabal Hamrat Fidan project in southern Jordan.Thomas Higham is Deputy Director of the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit, Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art, Oxford University. ... Read more

Product Description
Although the technique of radiocarbon dating has been established and used as a research tool in a variety of fields since the late 1940s, no serious effort has been made to compile a comprehensive annotated bibliography of the literature devoted to radiocarbon dating and its applications. This is partly due to the multi-disciplinary aspect of the topic causing indexing of radiocarbon dating literature to be scattered in a variety of abstracting services and scientific fields and also partly due to the rapid and constant growth of the literature. This makes searching for literature on the general topic of radiocarbon dating a very cumbersome task.
Radiocarbon dating appears as an indexed subject only since 1965, however current literature shows that early works are still widely referred to, indicating their importance as foundation and framework for new research. Thus the selected range of the bibliography, 1947-1968, fills the gap not covered by indexing services or computer information retrieval. This bibliography lists over 2800 articles (in the English language), and the bibliography is divided into 14 chapters. Within the chapters, the entries are in alphabetical order by title. The bibliography also has three indexes which offer access to material by author, subject, and geographical names. ... Read more

Product Description
The twelve papers in this volume originate from a conference held at the British School at Rome in 1991, and present a wide range of discussion on the problems and methodology in the use of radiocarbon dating. Contributors include: J Ambers (Some practical difficulties in the use of Carbon 14 in archaeology); S Improta (Contributi all'archeologia e aspetti metodologici della datazione); V Barbina, A Del Fabbro & F Calligaris (An overview of the reliability of radiocarbon dating); M Diana (Tecnologie diagnostiche avanzate per indagini archeologiche); L Fasani & N Martinelli (Problemi relativi alle palafitte italiane alla luce della ricerca dendrocronologica); M Pluciennik (Holocene hunter-gathers in Italy); R Skeates (Towards an absolute chronology for the Neolithic in central Italy); A Cazzella (Cronologia rediocarbonica durante l'eta del Bronza); R Whitehouse (The British Museum Carbon 14 for Italian prehistory); S Tusa (Cronologia assoluta e sequenza culturale nella paletnologia siciliana); R H Tykot (Radiocarbon dating and absolute chronology in Sardinia and Corsica); R Skeates (A radiocarbon date-list for prehistoric Italy [c.46,400 BP - 2450 BP/400 cal. BC]). ... Read more

Product Description
A detailed investigation of the reliability of marine shell for radiocarbon dating New Zealand, which compares paired charcoal and marine shell radiocarbon ages from archaeological sites, specifically excavated for this study, and from already dated deposits. Scmidt discusses the factors and problems that need to be considered before sampling and testing and identifies several species of shell that can be relied upon. As a result, Schmidt proposes a chronology for the colonisation of New Zealand. ... Read more

Product Description
Interest in the Turin Shroud continues to the present day even though it was finally carbon dated in 1988 and shown not to be of an age consistent with Christ's burial. Scientifically, the age of the shroud cloth is of little consequence, but to the general public, it is of considerable significance.

The author Harry E. Gove is a co-inventor of accelerator mass spectrometry and was responsible for its use in establishing whether the Turin Shroud could have been Christ's burial cloth. Relic, Icon or Hoax?: Carbon Dating the Turin Shroud presents an eyewitness account of the events that culminated in the final determination of the age of the linen cloth of the Turin Shroud and some of the subsequent reactions to the results. The book discusses the application of accelerator mass spectrometry to the carbon dating of the Turin Shroud using samples only a few square centimeters in area and weighing only a few tens of milligrams. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Where is the academic detachment?
If it weren't for its considerable entertainment value, I wouldn't give this book more than one star. Given that it has been written by an academic person, one ought be able to expect from the author some minimal standards of objectivity. Unfortunately, from almost A to Z this book does not meet the requirements. Beginning with the quite untrue statement in the foreword (de facto refuted by Gove in his 1998 book "From Hiroshima to the Iceman"), that the STURP group (Shroud of Turin Project, the US scientists that undertook an investigation on the Shroud in 1978) had tried in vain to block the radiocarbon dating of the Shroud before attempting to jump on the bandwaggon, right up to the fantasy allegation in the last chapter that Turin has arranged for the secret dating of an additional piece of the Shroud in the aftermath of the test of 1988.

De mortuis nihil nisi bonum, but it simply must be said that the author of this book has dwelled all too often on the level of plain polemics.
His judgement on the work done by STURP, for instance, and on their motivations, is highly one-sided. Would STURP ever have bothered to resort to the services of a Walter McCrone if they had been hell-bent from the outset on proving the Shroud genuine?
What he says about STURP as a group, may be true for some of its members, but even there Gove resorts to exaggeration and distortion. Thus he calls the author of "Verdict on the Shroud" an "abrasive character", on account of a clash they had in Turin in 1978, conveniently forgetting that it was he himself who opened the hostilities. Also he is scoffing about the alleged statement in that book of there being a chance of 83 millions to One that the Shroud is the genuine shroud of Christ, not comprehending (or not wanting to comprehend) that the calculation alluded to (meant as a rough estimate) does NOT constitute a general probability statement, but applies only in the case of the theoretical eventuality that the Turin Shroud represents a genuine first century crucifixion, which in itself is quite improbable from a purely theoretical point of vue.

What appears most irritating to me is that one cannot even rely on Mr. Gove when he is dealing with his own field of interest. His comments on the preliminary C14 tests of 1983/84 run be the British Museum are just as biased as the rest of the book (though the other way around), clearly glossing over the reality. Not just one single outlier result has come out of these tests, as Gove seems to be indicating, but as many as four of them (cf. "Radocarbon", Vol. 28, 2A, 1986), plus a number of other unsatisfactory results. Of course, it would have been quite disastrous to reveal the whole truth!
Concerning the dating of the Shroud itself, Goves "AD 1325 plus/minus 33 years" (with 68% confidence) is quite at odds with the figures given in the official report on it in "Nature" (Vol. 337, February 1989): "AD 1273-1288". As if Gove had attempted to close the gap between the REAL mean date - 1281, NOT 1325!! - to the alleged first historical appearance of the Shroud in 1353... Does this not, to quote Gove in his own words about STURP, "suggest something less that scientific dispassion"?

Historiographer, Switzerland

Gove whining about the Vatican not accepting his protocol
Harry Gove developed the method of radiocarbon dating that was used to date the Shroud of Turin. He was a professor at the University of Rochester. Compared to world-class scientific universities like MIT, it would essentially be considered a third-rate institution in that field.

Gove proposed a protocol to test the Shroud. The Vatican approved a different proposal. Basically the choice of protocol was largely a matter of Vatican politics. Gove was foolish enough to think that because he invented the test method he could go toe-to-toe with the Vatican in political wrangling by using the media (in the 1970's) and have a chance of winning. This book is basically Gove whining about how his protocol was better and should have been adopted. It's primary contribution is details of the various meetings. However, since even the protocols suggested at the various meetings were ultimately not approved, it is really just a waste of time.

There is one EXTREMELY important fact anyone interested in the radiocarbon dating of the Shroud needs to know: THE SECTION THAT WAS RADIOCARBON DATED WAS PART OF A PREVIOUSLY UNKNOWN REPAIR, NOT THE ORIGINAL SHROUD. In other words, the actual SHROUD has never been radiocarbon dated. One of the members of STURP, who did the original scientific analysis, re-examined fiber samples from the area later used for the radiocarbon dating and found out that a piece of cotton had been rewoven into the Shroud's linen and then dyed to match the linen.The repair had been done so expertly that none of the scientists had noticed it even under high magnification -- but then, they weren't looking for a repair because there was no record of such a repair and it was expertly done.

Highly readable but biased account
I had to write a review if only to correct the record.Harry Gove has written a highly entertaining book about the Carbon Dating or the Shroud ostensibly but it is far more a record of Harry Gove's desire to use the Shroud dating as a poster child for AMS (Accellerated Mass Spectrometry).In the process he manages to come across as a single minded and determined individual with a very large ax to grind.

He trashes STURP as "true believers" whatever those are, and fails to note the contradictions in his own positions as he careens through the book.Someone who wants to find out something about the Shroud of Turin or even much about AMS should go elsewhere.This is a book all about Harry Gove on a quest and he trashes anyone that disagrees with him.

I like to keep this book next to The Rape of the Turin Shroud by William Meacham which is a useful counterbalance to Gove's venom.

If you are interested in this fascinating time in the history of the Shroud of Turin than you can't miss the book.But don't buy it expecting anything like impartiality or dispassionate objectivity.It is a book about Gove on a mission.It's fun and entertaining but what you find out is how Gove judges everyone regardless of whether he has any competence to make the judgment or not -- usually he doesn't.

Nevertheless a fun, entertaining and riotous frolic through the complex ways of science and religion in a skeptical era.

Informative and surprisingly easy to read and understand
I have always been fascinated by the Turin Shroud.When it was finally carbon dated and sadly proved to be a fake (or is it a fake, even now there are doubts?) I felt immense sadness even though I am not of the Christian faith.
In the early 1970s onwards Professor Grove set about with a group of fellow scientists, religious zealots, curious hangers-on and an assortment of faithful doubters to use this new technique in a scientific manner to prove the worth of carbon dating.And what better than a piece of historical enigma to use this new discovery on other than the Turin Shroud?
This book follows Professor Grove through the many years of negotiation it took before the Vatican finally allowed the controversial experiment to go ahead.
In parts this book is highly technical but Professor Grove manages to make himself and the theory behind Carbon dating understood.He is never sentimental but I picked up on a quiet unspoken faith he has in both the scientific and the religious and he comes across as man who somehow manages to balance these diametrically opposed modes of thought in a coherent and sensible way..
This is both a good read, surprisingly quite humorous in parts as well as being a technical masterpiece which anyone with a leaning toward academia will appreciate.Worth getting out from your local library if the cost is too prohibitive. ... Read more

Product Description
Radiocarbon dating covers the most recent span of geo-archaeological time, back to c.55,000 years BP. The list of applications and disciplines it can be used for is wide-ranging and burgeoning. It is used widely in dating aspects of the Earth's environmental, oceanographic and atmospheric systems. It is used as a tracer in investigating residence times of carbon in soils, rivers, oceans and lakes, and to document the movements of oceanic water and its circulation and exchange with the atmosphere. It is also used in aerosol science, and is crucial to studies of Earth's changing climate. This wide relevance of the 14C isotope means that one must be something of a polymath to understand, and it was for this reason that in 1981 the first '14C and Archaeology' Symposium was held. Its aim: to provide a wider forum for studies of prehistoric chronology than would normally be allowed at the Radiocarbon conferences. The 4th Symposium was held in Oxford in April 2002, and the proceedings that follow comprise thirty-one papers, covering archaeological dating research from the Altai to Antarctica, and from the Palaeolithic to the Medieval. (Oxford University School of Archaeology, Monograph 62, 2004) ... Read more

Product Description
Since World War II, there has been tremendous success in thedevelopment of new methods for dating artifacts; the so-called"radiocarbon revolution" was only the first such discovery. Theincreasing accuracy of the various new techniques has brought aboutmajor changes in archaeological research strategies. This importantnew text compiles the work of some of today's most innovativearchaeologists who summarize progress in their respective techniquesover the last 30 years -- with an emphasis on developments ofthe last five -- and the status of current research. ... Read more

Product Description
Radiocarbon After Four Decades: An Interdisciplinary Perspective commemorates the 40th anniversary of radiocarbon dating. The volume presents discussions of every aspect of this dating technique, as well as chronicles of its development and views of future advancements and applications. All of the 64 authors played major roles in establishment, development or application of this revolutionary scientific tool. The 35 chapters provide a solid foundation in the essential topics of radiocarbon dating: Historical Perspectives; The Natural Carbon Cycle; Instrumentation and Sample Preparation; Hydrology; Old World Archaeology; New World Archaeology; Earth Sciences; and Biomedical Applications. ... Read more

Product Description
Gives up-to-date examples of the techniques used to date fossils and ancient artifacts--such as genetic studies, radiocarbon dating, and dendrochronology--with several experiments and projects to help kids better understand the techniques. ... Read more