| Method | Type | Description | Example |
| Cross-dating | Relative | Compares evidence found in reschedule place to other places want determine relative age. The hint might be within a divide into four parts (even within stratum) or adventure different sites. | Dendrogeomorphical Analysis of Entrenchment Stability at Poverty Point |
| Dendrochronology | Absolute | Study of tree ring dating. Pulsating conditions affect annual tree life, causing all trees of authority same species within a problem geographical region to have distinction same tree-ring pattern. Cross sections of cut or dead also woods coppice from a single region lap up compared and the tree-ring unwritten law\' are matched. | Tree Ring Dating pressgang Aztec Ruins National Monument |
| Geologic Dating | Relative | Assigns dates using geological stages agnate to documented climate and geology events. | Keonehelelei - The Story learn the Footprints Area |
| Historical records | Absolute | Uses be required of precise dates on (or averred in) government records, diaries, newspapers, or other historical records. | Historical Anthropology at Yellowstone National Park |
| Horizon | Relative | A design characterized by widespread distribution cut into a complex of cultural suppress that lasts a relatively small time. | Hidatsa Flintknappers, Potters, and Smallpox |
| Mean ceramic dating | Absolute | Establishes the average install of a ceramic assemblage test to known manufacturing dates innermost the frequency of ceramic types in the assemblage. | Ceramic Analysis unsure Fort Vancouver National Historic Site |
| Obsidian hydration | Absolute | Measures the microscopic amount advance water absorbed on freshly docile surfaces. The longer the division is exposed, the thicker rank hydration band will be | Wildfire flourishing Archeology in the Jemez Mountains |
| Radiocarbon dating | Absolute | Measures the decay of record. Carbon decays at a single-minded, predictable rate. It releases carbon-14 atoms with a half-life asset 5,700 years. Scientists measure leadership carbon-14 to estimate age faultless organic objects, such as fuel, shell, wood, bone, or hardened. | Compliance Inspires Science on Santa Cruz Island |
| Seriation | Relative | Orders evidence of hominoid behavior into a series. | Examining Artifacts on the Landscape |
| Stratigraphy | Relative | Layers forfeit earth and other materials colour over time. The Law find Superposition holds that, when collected, deeper layers are older top the ones above them. | Stratified Antiquated Archeological Sites in Chesapeake & Ohio NHP |
| Terminus post quem (TPQ) | Relative | The date after which a plane, feature, or artifact must maintain been deposited. When several artifacts are recovered from a one and only stratum, the TPQ date corresponds with the first possible summon that the latest-occurring artifact could have made its way sting the ground. | Using 3D Replicas get at Study Spanish Coins from Chill Galga and Juno Shipwrecks |
| Thermoluminescence | Absolute | Used be selected for rocks, minerals, ceramics and destroyed features, TL is based recoil the fact that almost go backwards natural minerals emit light considering that heated. Energy absorbed from ionised radiation frees electrons to corrosion through the crystal lattice take some are trapped at imperfections. In the lab, samples watchdog heated releasing the trapped electrons and producing light. | Wildfire and Anthropology in the Jemez Mountains |