The relationship between the calendrical and radiometric chronological systems has been relatively ambivalent over the years. Since the late 1940S, when a series of Egyptian artefacts were used as a benchmark in order to assess the reliability of the newly invented radiocarbon dating technique, a consensus has emerged that the two systems are broadly in line. The major problem, however, is that the traditional Calendrical system of dating, whatever its failings, virtually always has a smaller margin of error than radiocarbon dates, which are necessarily quoted in terms of a broad band of dates (that is, one or two standard deviations), never capable of pinpointing the construction of a building or the making of an artefact to a specific year (or even a specific decade). Certainly the advent of dendrochronological calibration curves—allowing the spans of radiocarbon years to be converted into actual calendar years—represents a significant improvement in terms of accuracy. However, the vagaries of the curve and the continued need to take into account associated error mean that dates must still be quoted as a range of possibilities rather than one specific year.
The prehistory of Egypt, on the other hand, has benefited greatly from the application of radiometric dating, since it was previously reliant on relative dating methods (see Chapters 2 and 3). The radiometric techniques have made it possible not only to place Petrie’s ‘sequence dates’ within a framework of absolute dates (however imprecise), but also to push Egyptian chronology back into the earlier Neolithic and Palaeolithic periods.
World History
