But only recently have scientists accumulated enough wood samples and other evidence from bogs, ice layers, medieval ruins, ancient campfires and many other sources to extend dendrochronology to objects almost as old as the last Ice Age. Baillie of Queen's University, Belfast, and his colleagues expect to determine the exact date of a neolithic roadway in Somerset, England. 541 - almost perfectly match the years for which eruptions were also detected in the rings of North American bristlecone pines and in thin layers of acidic ice within the Greenland ice cap. On an ice cap, it is embedded in an ice layer that is gradually covered by successive layers of non-acidic ice.

The main relative dating method is stratigraphy (pronounced stra-TI-gra-fee), which is the study of layers of rocks or the objects embedded within those layers.Surely with such fabulous investigative techniques there are no remaining mysteries at archaeological sites. The problem is, that these techniques are often misrepresented on television and in other media sources. Dendrochronology is the study and dating of tree rings.Every wood chip is datable, every stone placement tells a story, every piece of DNA is assignable. They exist, and yes, they are extremely helpful; but often the public gets the wrong idea about how successful and how easy modern scientific analytical techniques actually are. As trees grow, they annually produce rings within their wood.This page does not attempt to cover the details of wood formation that make tree rings possible, but rather provides an overview of common wood characteristics and anomalies that you will need to identify when you are crossdating.Variation in these rings is due to variation in environmental conditions when they were formed.Dating techniques are procedures used by scientists to determine the age of an object or a series of events.The two main types of dating methods are relative and absolute.