Absolute and Relative Dating
Recap
What do these terms stand for?
• BC
• BCE
• AD
• CE
How do you turn a date (1100 AD) into a century?
Dating Sources
• Written sources are easier to determine when they were created due
to the language, characters, subject matter and what the text was
written on
• It is harder to tell where an artefact was created in time because
there is no written information
• Historians use the concepts of relative and absolute dating to place
an object in time
What else could historians use to tell how old an object is?
Absolute Dating
• Many different scientific techniques can be used to tell the age of an
object:
• X-rays
• Chemical testing
• Burning
• Magnification
Relative Dating
• Historians look at two objects and decide which is older
• They work out the relationship between the two objects and use their
logic to come up with an answer
Which is older - The chariot or the invention
of the wheel?
Try another one - farming or building the
Great Wall of China?
Match the related statements below, then
outline how you used logic to work this out