Radiocarbon Dating, is a method for an organic material that is applicable to about the last 70000

years. It relies on the assumed constancy over time of atmospheric 14C:12C ratios and the known rate
of decay, of which half is lost in a period (the ‘half-life’) of every 5730 ± 30 years. (Libby standard)

Professor Willard Libby, a chemist at the University of Chicago, first proposed the idea of
radiocarbon dating in 1946. Three years later, Libby proved his hypothesis correct when he
accurately dated a series of objects with already-known ages. Since Libby’s discovery,

Radiocarbon dating has become an invaluable tool for archaeologists,

paleontologists, and others looking for reliable dates for organic
matter.
Apart from being among the most frequently encountered organic materials in archaeology, the
dating of human bones is of particular importance because the focus of archaeological research is
the people themselves and because most human bones come from graves, which, unlike most
features found in settlements, more often than not have the advantage of being closed features, i.e.,
features that are clearly delimited and whose content has not been disturbed by post-depositional
interventions.

Compared with other fields of research that uses radiocarbon dating (e.g., geology, oceanography,
and paleoclimatology), archaeology has exploited the possibilities of the method the most and done
the greatest amount to encourage its refinement.

it is widely accepted that the advent of 14 C dating transformed discussions concerning dating
frameworks for the movement of the earliest human groups that occupied the Western
Hemisphere. 33

Over the following five decades, a steadily increasing corpus of 14 C determinations has been
obtained on materials associated, with various degrees of confidence, with a number of Clovis
and Folsom sites in North America. The researchers concluded that “only a continuing program
of radiometric dating and careful stratigraphic correlations can address the lingering ambiguity
about the emergence and spread of Clovis culture.” 

Carbon-14 remains in organic matter like plants and animals and when elephants eat plant matter
the isotope enter their teeth and tusks. Carbon-14 in the atmosphere declines at a known amount
each year, so by measuring the isotope in a risk, scientists can determine in what year did the
elephant died. In 1989 the international trade in ivory was banned so, if an ivory tusk is found
after that year it's illegal by combining this data with DNA analysis pinpointing the geographical
source of ivory law enforcement can combat poaching.