Theoretical constraints on the precision and age range of rehydroxylation dating

Accurate and precise dating methods are of central importance to archaeology, palaeontology and earth science. This paper investigates the expected precision and age range of rehydroxylation dating, a recently proposed technique for fired clays. An expression for combined measurement uncertainty is presented, which takes into account all significant sources of experimental uncertainty. Numerical simulations are performed for comparison. Combined measurement uncertainties of approximately 5% with respect to the age of the ceramic should be possible given well-designed experiments. In this case, the most significant contribution to combined measurement uncertainty is from effective lifetime temperature. In addition, it is shown that precision should be acceptable for recently fired material (less than 1 year). Mismatch of balance resolution to sample mass results in large variation in combined relative uncertainties, which vary by four orders of magnitude (approx. 1–1160%) across recent e...