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Comment by jonny_eh | Hacker News Reader

I skimmed the article but didn't see how they determined its age.

From Gobekli Tepe, but probably similar:

"At the end of its uselife, the megalithic enclosures of Göbekli Tepe were refilled systematically. This special element of the site formation process makes it hard to date the enclosures by the radiocarbon method, as there is no clear correlation of the fill with the architecture. Several ways have been explored to overcome this situation, including the dating of carbonate laminae on architectural structures, of bones and the remains of short-lived plants from the filling. The data obtained from pedogenic carbonates on architectural structures back the relative stratigraphic sequence observed during the excavation. But, unfortunately, they are of no use in dating the sampled structures themselves, as the carbonate layers started forming only after the moment of their burial. At least these samples offer a good terminus ante quem for the refilling of the enclosures. For layer III this terminus ante quem lies in the second half of the 9th millennium calBC, while for layer II it is located in the middle of the 8th millennium calBC."

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/258182967_Radiocarb...

I'm not an archaeologist and I'm having difficulty looking up "uselife" online. What does it mean?

Is it jargon for "the duration of its use by humans?"

In the above quote that's how I read it: "When Göbekli Tepe was no longer used by humans, the megalithic enclosures were refilled systematically." Correct?

But in that case it seems like the refilling determines EOL and not the other way around. What am I missing?

You're missing that it is dating the material you ise to refill, not the refill action itself. You can refill with topsoil, which woild indicate EOL as you say. or you could refill with dirt from a pit, which could be thousands of years older. You could use dirt with dinosaur fossils in it, but that doesn't make the site 65 million years old.

Anyway according to other comments apparently they used a few means of dating already.

Sorry, I really didn’t get that far. I’m just trying to figure out what “uselife” means, not the dating tech.

Megalithic raves were getting out of hand, so the priestly class had topsoil and gravel dumped into the underground rave-atoriums in the hope that everyone would go back to quietly contemplating the sky. Similar thing happened at Chaco canyon when younger generations insisted on partying in the kivas and didn’t much care about the sun-dagger or the celestial desert roads to nowhere, anymore.

I read it similarly - as the present article for this post says, these were carved of “living rock”, which I take to mean that rock/dirt was removed from around the megalithic sculptures. In this context, the refill was when these hollowed out areas were covered back up. I read “uselife” similarly to you - the end of their usability vis a vis the refill.

Radiocarbon dating: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Göbekli_Tepe#Chronology

I was looking for this too -- 11,000 years is sort of the benchmark for earliest civilization, so having that be the bounding side for how "young" this place could be struck me as some equivalent to click bait?

edit: looks like someone posted from another source that it was with radiocarbon dating - no reason to think that's incorrect, it just would've been a nice extra sentence or two to include to avoid this very hang-up that at least two people had..

But I think the question is radiocarbon dating of what..?? Saying they dated a lithic archeological site with radiocarbon measurements doesn't tell us anymore than they measured something with a given method. What was the something??

I posted an extract from link earlier in this thread about the other site, which explained that they were dating the laminae on the structure that started forming after the fill, or sampling organic material tossed in with the fill, but neither really gets at how old the structure itself it. Curious to understand more if people find it.

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