Radiocarbon dating (also referred to as carbon dating or carbon-14 dating) is a method for determining the age of an object containing organic material by using the properties of radiocarbon, a radioactive isotope of carbon. Histories of archaeology often refer to its impact as the radiocarbon revolution.

What is the difference between carbon dating and regular radioactive dating?

Radiocarbon dating method Radiocarbon dating is also simply called carbon-14 dating. Carbon-14 is a radioactive isotope of carbon, with a half-life of 5,730 years (which is very short compared with the above isotopes), and decays into nitrogen. The carbon-14 dating limit lies around 58,000 to 62,000 years.