As I understand it, the effectiveness of C14 breaks down with the onset of
the INdustrial revolution, because so much non-radioactive carbon has been
released into the air since then.  You might want to look into TL dating.
Laurel Breece at UCLA has been recently investigating the use of TL dating
in historical archaeology with very successfull results.
                        J. Cameron Monroe

At 11:59 AM 6/30/99 -0400, you wrote:
>In a message dated 6/30/1999 11:54:25 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
>[log in to unmask] writes:
>
><< Hello to all,
>
> I am faced with the problem of dating a settlement mound with occupation
> layers throughout the medieval and post-medieval periods, actually up to
> today.
>
> Is there any literature out there where the problems of 14C-dating in the
> past 4-500 years are tackled ?
>
> I would be grateful for any hint !
>
> regards
>
> D. Gronenborn
>
>  >>
>
>
>I have always heard that the accuracy breaks down in recent times--have you
>considered OCR dating? Seems to work pretty well with later sites. Carl Steen
>