choose the correct method for the correct timerange!
- dendrochronology is precise up to the year! but only if you have enough contextual tree products to catalog the climactic patterns in the rings. it’s extremely useful for archaeology!
- stratigraphy is almost always possible and it’s super easy! if you find an artifact above another, the thing above probably came later than the thing below! unfortunately it will only tell you relative terms and doesn’t give you an absolute estimate
- radiocarbon is good out to 70k years and can be precise within 10s of years!
- potassium argon and uranium lead are good for dating even older rocks and fossils, out to the billions of years range, but you won’t get as much precision!