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Archaeology enters the ‘atomic age’: a short history of radiocarbon, 1946–1960
The British Journal for the History of Science ( IF 1.245 ) Pub Date : 2020-03-13 , DOI: 10.1017/s0007087420000011
Emily M Kern 1
Affiliation  

Today, the most powerful research technique available for assigning chronometric age to human cultural objects is radiocarbon dating. Developed in the United States in the late 1940s by an alumnus of the Manhattan Project, radiocarbon dating measures the decay of the radioactive isotope carbon-14 (C14) in organic material, and calculates the time elapsed since the materials were removed from the life cycle. This paper traces the interdisciplinary collaboration between archaeology and radiochemistry that led to the successful development of radiocarbon dating in the early 1950s, following the movement of people and ideas from Willard Libby's Chicago radiocarbon laboratory to museums, universities and government labs in the United States, Australia, Denmark and New Zealand. I show how radiocarbon research built on existing technologies and networks in atomic chemistry and physics but was deeply shaped by its original private philanthropic funders and archaeologist users, and ultimately remained to the side of many contemporaneous Cold War scientific and military projects.

中文翻译:

考古学进入“原子时代”:放射性碳的简短历史,1946-1960

今天,可用于为人类文物分配计时年龄的最强大的研究技术是放射性碳测年。由曼哈顿计划的校友于 1940 年代后期在美国开发,放射性碳测年测量有机材料中放射性同位素碳 14 (C14) 的衰变,并计算自材料从生命周期中移除以来所经过的时间. 本文追溯了考古学和放射化学之间的跨学科合作,这些合作导致了 1950 年代初期放射性碳测年的成功发展,当时人们和思想从 Willard Libby 的芝加哥放射性碳实验室转移到美国、澳大利亚的博物馆、大学和政府实验室。 、丹麦和新西兰。
更新日期:2020-03-13
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