Just realized we're dating Bronze Age artifacts wrong and nobody talks about it

I keep seeing posts where people say a bronze sword or tool is from like 1200 BC based on the style alone. But here's the thing I noticed after reading a few excavation reports from the Levant area. The same style of bronze dagger shows up in a 1500 BC layer in one site and a 900 BC layer in another site fifty miles away. So either styles stuck around for 600 years or the dating methods are relying too much on assumed timelines from old digs. I get that carbon dating is expensive and not every piece gets tested but we're basically guessing half the time. Am I wrong to think we should push for more lab testing on everyday artifacts instead of just the fancy royal stuff? What do you all think about using style alone to pin down a date?

3 comments

3 Comments

christopher_craig18d ago

Hell yeah! What if style just spread slower back then?

seth_martinez2118d ago

@christopher_craig nailed it. People forget the internet wasn't around to blast every new thing into your face 24/7. Trends had to actually travel through word of mouth or magazines, which took real time. A haircut in New York might take a whole year to hit middle America. That slower pace made things stick around longer too, not just disappear in a week.

reese_taylor6918d ago

Maybe pottery styles changed faster than bronze ones, so we should cross-reference the two more often.