‘Transition Dating’ – a Heuristic Mathematical Approach to the Collation of Radiocarbon Dates from Stratified Sequences

A heuristic approach, nicknamed “transition dating,” was used to date sequences of early Iron Age contexts using a series of 14 C determinations. The basic principles of transition dating are simple and intuitive: 1) attempt to date transitions between periods, phases, etc. rather than the phases themselves, and 2) the most plausible date for that transition is one that is later than the dates from contexts preceding it, and is still earlier than the dates succeeding it. Hypotheses regarding the actual date of each transition may be evaluated using an appropriate loss function. These loss functions can also be adjusted or weighted by the user to account differentially for the various factors causing the distortion or “fuzz” in the dates.