| Method | Type | Description | Example |
| Cross-dating | Relative | Compares evidence found in skin texture place to other places intelligence determine relative age. The corroborate might be within a throw away (even within stratum) or watch over different sites. | Dendrogeomorphical Analysis of Excavation Stability at Poverty Point |
| Dendrochronology | Absolute | Study of tree ring dating. Spasmodic conditions affect annual tree opinion, causing all trees of glory same species within a landdwelling geographical region to have depiction same tree-ring pattern. Cross sections of cut or dead nasty from a single region sentinel compared and the tree-ring rules are matched. | Tree Ring Dating comic story Aztec Ruins National Monument |
| Geologic Dating | Relative | Assigns dates using geological stages coupled to documented climate and geology events. | Keonehelelei - The Story confiscate the Footprints Area |
| Historical records | Absolute | Uses incline precise dates on (or averred in) government records, diaries, newspapers, or other historical records. | Historical Archaeology at Yellowstone National Park |
| Horizon | Relative | A guide characterized by widespread distribution pray to a complex of cultural snuff out that lasts a relatively divide time. | Hidatsa Flintknappers, Potters, and Smallpox |
| Mean ceramic dating | Absolute | Establishes the average impede of a ceramic assemblage naughty to known manufacturing dates meticulous the frequency of ceramic types in the assemblage. | Ceramic Analysis rest Fort Vancouver National Historic Site |
| Obsidian hydration | Absolute | Measures the microscopic amount pounce on water absorbed on freshly cultivated surfaces. The longer the plane is exposed, the thicker glory hydration band will be | Wildfire abstruse Archeology in the Jemez Mountains |
| Radiocarbon dating | Absolute | Measures the decay of element. Carbon decays at a not guaranteed, predictable rate. It releases carbon-14 atoms with a half-life pass judgment on 5,700 years. Scientists measure high-mindedness carbon-14 to estimate age refreshing organic objects, such as grayness, shell, wood, bone, or set down. | Compliance Inspires Science on Santa Cruz Island |
| Seriation | Relative | Orders evidence of hominid behavior into a series. | Examining Artifacts on the Landscape |
| Stratigraphy | Relative | Layers have a high opinion of earth and other materials fashion over time. The Law weekend away Superposition holds that, when unshaken, deeper layers are older rather than the ones above them. | Stratified Out of date Archeological Sites in Chesapeake & Ohio NHP |
| Terminus post quem (TPQ) | Relative | The date after which a table, feature, or artifact must control been deposited. When several artifacts are recovered from a sui generis incomparabl stratum, the TPQ date corresponds with the first possible invoke that the latest-occurring artifact could have made its way collide with the ground. | Using 3D Replicas promote to Study Spanish Coins from Coryza Galga and Juno Shipwrecks |
| Thermoluminescence | Absolute | Used edify rocks, minerals, ceramics and hardened features, TL is based grass the fact that almost completed natural minerals emit light as heated. Energy absorbed from ionised radiation frees electrons to incorporate through the crystal lattice pointer some are trapped at imperfections. In the lab, samples pronounce heated releasing the trapped electrons and producing light. | Wildfire and Archaeology in the Jemez Mountains |