A NEW POTTERY DATING TECHNIQUE

this podcast is sponsored by our good friends who have become patrons via the patreon a crowdfunding site if you'd like to join them helping us produce more podcasts films and other shows please go to patreon.com/scishow hello I'm Rupert's özkan and I'm Michael bot and welcome to a three history guys podcast about a new discovery in the very home city of London yeah it's one of those where a rather spurious headline came dancing across our time lines and we seem to be quite astute at spotting these don't we also since they seem to be providing quite a rich source of information and interesting discoveries shall we say well well the the headline that I found almost made me put my grumpy hat on it was a Daily Express who said journalists have said that London is now I've written that it's that London is 3,000 years older than previously thought yeah well that sort of headline should priya's up a bit shouldn't yes you found a good one though didn't you well I found a good one it might even the independent wasn't far away from her the independent said new discovery suggests London's story goes back more than three thousand years longer than previously thought yes okay but top prize for getting it absolutely all in there must go to the Daily Mail who said Neolithic dirty dishes dug up in Shoreditch High Street were used by London's earliest East Enders who feasted on goat beef lamb and dairy products 5,600 years ago new carbon dating technique reveals that was just the headline yeah yeah it is it's quite impressive if they had just left out the London's EastEnders bit you know as if finding something in London actually meant that anything remotely affair enough I think I'd go there myself if I was writing a headline you would you one of our things on Eugene yes I would but it did do the honest thing with the you know getting the word Neolithic in there you did yeah dealing compensating in there that's for the Daily Mail it's almost astonishing yeah actually anyway anyway anyway moving on well that headline sort of given the whole game away almost hasn't it really so well kind of it except that this is all based around a new technique for dating hmm that has come from the team is actually headed by Professor Richard Evershed at the University of Bristol's School of Chemistry and they have pioneered a new technique where they can extract if it's basically fats animal fats so you know milks whether it's cow's milk goat's milk sheep's milk you know or even meat from the pores of the insides of of pottery vessels yeah so this new technique means that you can take pops from pretty much anywhere and date them to a level of accuracy that has just never been possible before it's just really exciting and that that really is the story lurking behind these these headlines less of you know the history of London being thrust back 3,000 years and this is much much more about science in archaeology taking it should we should we get the the the local archaeology out the way but yes kind of irrelevant yes that's wrong it's not irrelevant for the people who are doing this but it's it's the thing is it's it's not broadly applicable that they've at the in Shoreditch it's a site in Shoreditch where they've come across a it's not just a midden I mean it's basically a big rubbish tip which they estimate could be about twelve meters across not a vote that not a vote if it not but but they discovered there were 436 fragments of pottery that they excavated and they reckoned that they are roughly 24 separate vessels that are smashed out there and so that's it it's this somewhat in Shoreditch where they have dug this this stuff up and so the archaeology there is gonna be very exciting it'll be nice to see what comes out of there even though it has nothing was talking as if people wouldn't yeah well we're talking as if people would know where Shoreditch is north north east london well in fact if we're gonna be honest it's not really even North London it is just on the north side of the city of London is in the very heart of London yeah so it's you know it's it's well south of places like Walthamstow and Hackney yeah yeah I thought is part of Hackney it's but the point is Shoreditch you know the earliest parts of London we are told anyway were on the Thames if there was anything existing at all in the time we're talking about back in the Neolithic we suspect it would have been along the river and this would have been a completely separate settlement from anything down there on the Thames because this was on its own river north of the Thames we know the Thames was quite a lot wider back then but odd I would need to check back a lot to see quite how much wider yeah and we're told that Shoreditch in those days was a bit of a marshy meadow yes yes yes but but enough of the local what's it all about this is what what Richard Evershed and his team did Richard ever said he he was thinking about this as a technique you know over what 20 something like first time it's been used I think he said that it wasn't until they could that they installed their own carbon dating unit that they were actually able to to really do this now yeah you know you just tossed that off as if it's a nothing they've been stored their own governor dating you look fantastic yeah but it can you imagine it must have been amazing for him to finally reach 20 years of work and suddenly you know ring ring ring the bells well the the background in the context to this is of course Patrick before carbon-14 dating pottery itself was the principal manner of of dating there was a whole established taxonomy of pottery types you know beaker groove band quranic and my lexicon was run out there various sorts of baker and various sorts of crude even found out a few weeks ago there was Ronald's way pottery from the island I didn't ever know about that beforehand no anyway it was a typology of pottery that was scaled so it was a short you know could be used as a shorthand or an easier way of approximating dating and then when c14 came in that went out the window just a bit because c14 you can't see 14-the do a radiocarbon dating of pottery itself you depend on organic materials such as bone and charcoal etc for that well the but the exciting thing about this is that pottery comes right back center stage again being able to extract the lipids as you say from what's been cooked in it as organic as organics and be able to do the radio carbon dating on that it's quite quite spectacular and it's anticipated it'll have quite an effect well it's is it's wonderful how you know in in making sure that they really did have this right they tested stuff from sites all over the place from Ian and Europe and Africa the site's that when the dating was known with great clarity so no question this is this is the age of this site so they then took you know bits of ceramic from these sites cattle Joya and date and dated them yes we track in some indeed yeah yeah but but dating you know using their techniques to date the pottery and making sure they actually are correlated with what was already known and it is amazing really that they've managed to get this into a window of they know they're accurate to a latitude of a hundred and thirty-eight years and over you know over a period of like five and a half thousand years just calling it being able to date to within a lifetime yeah yeah span of a lifetime so I think it's a bit beyond us to go into the actual science but words like nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy and mass spectrometry well I'm just saying the words involved because the the the fats have to be isolated and make sure that they're they're the right basis upon which to do the the dating that's the key thing it's not extracting fats per se but getting the right fats if I'm understanding this correctly anyway so a lot of work has gone into it well it's it's interesting isn't it that you know you look at the what's the word I'm looking for [Music] it's a marriage of techniques isn't it yeah because to be able to establish that you're looking at fats from cows milk sheep's milk goats milk that means that all sorts of other tests isotopic tests and you know and you know even potentially DNA have been carried out as well so it is yet another example of the romping forwards of scientific technology within archaeology it's just I'm just wondering how many Apple carts maybe whenever you get something new a new perspective things so something usually gets yes or somebody might get how many how many petulant feet will be stamped I think we come to the limits of our ability to speak coherent words I I think so but it it also needs to be just put out there of you think what those potentials are when you if you can apply a technique like this to sites that are already you know well-known but the sites that are most ancient so I mean catal hoyuk is the unit but some of the tells in the Middle East that we know you know we know go back many many many thousands of years you know what we'll be able to what will we be able to discern from you know what I bet you if it can be done and it's not too expensive to go back you know to go back to stuff that's already been excavated or analyzed and that is it could have a profound impact on the chronology of say the transition you know farmers coming over and displacing and two gatherers in this country and coming across the channel and up the Irish Sea and all that and establishing what was the sequence of establishment of farming in this country from the mythic over to the Neolithic we're going to use those terms yes indeed because they you you get the other aspects of them that if you've got people traveling depending on where they find any of these artifacts that if you know if you're traveling with food well cheese is a good food travel with isn't it it's legs so if you could show from isotopic and DNA analysis that the cheese or the lipids inside this pot so you find a pot in southern Britain and you find that actually that cheese has been in somebody's sweaty pocket for you know wherever it came from it may be polish cheese in southern Britain who knows who knows who knows what might turn up these questions and more will be answered probably not by us they're almost certainly no no not until we get this carbon-14 dating unit set up in my studio and on that bombshell I think it's time for us to thank you once more for listening and hope you enjoyed that little update hope back a little bit of clarity to London being 3000 years older than was previously thought as well mmm-hmm alright till the next time thanks for listening folks to choose [Music] but here thank you for watching this prehistory guy's show there's loads more to watch and you can get some of it on this playlist here if you'd like to receive updates about when we publish new content hit the subscribe button and you can unlock even more content by becoming a patreon supporter hit 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Channel: The Prehistory Guys

Views: 2,839

Keywords: michael bott, rupert soskin, podcast, archaeology, megalithic, neolithic, bronze age, burial sites, ancient history podcast, ancient history discoveries, neolithic era, neolithic man, megalithic archaeology, megalithic europe, richard evershed, c-14, carbon dating, pottery, beaker culture, dating techniques, ancient history, prehistory guys, the prehistory guys, ancient pottery, radiocarbon dating

Id: AxaF8P_JNL8

Length: 15min 57sec (957 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 29 2020