Gas Proportional Versus Liquid Scintillation Counting, Radiometric Versus AMS Dating

Abstract

I discuss here the basis of a comparison of methods for radiocarbon dating and introduce a new index for the relative merit of a system, factor of counting capacity, that is generally more appropriate than the commonly used factor of merit. The merit of a dating system cannot be based on a single figure but other factors must also be considered. A comparison of the gas proportional, liquid scintillation and accelerator mass spectrometry technique is presented that for gas proportional counters is based on a multi-detector system rather than a single detector.