Archaeologists use that assumption, called the law of superposition, to help determine a relative chronology for the site itself. Then, they use contextual clues and absolute dating techniques to ...

How do we know when they lived? Estimating the age of hominid fossils is usually a painstaking, two-part process, involving both "absolute" and "relative" dating. "Absolute" dating means finding a ...

Kidding aside, dating a find is crucial for understanding its significance and relation to other fossils or artifacts. Methods fall into one of two categories: relative or absolute. Before more ...

Paleolithic hunters built mammoth traps in what is now Mexico some 14,700 years ago. An unknown sea creature left footprints in sand some 550 million years ago, making them the oldest known ...

We still use these relative dating methods today as a first approach for dating fossils prior to assigning a numerical, or absolute, age. Can we date actual fossils? Sometimes. In Afar ...

A range of essential archaeological concepts are introduced alongside key field and laboratory methods, including survey techniques, relative and absolute dating, DNA analysis and environmental ...