Archaeological dating… sounds straightforward, right? Think again. In this episode of Stratified we dig into the wild, weird, & sometimes downright disastrous world of archaeological dating mistakes. From misplaced spark plugs (yes, really) to "out-of-place" artifacts, radiocarbon mix-ups, and full-blown site scandals, we explore what happens when time refuses to behave...or when archaeologists get a little too eager for the oldest date.

This isn’t about romantic disasters. It’s about the archaeological ones.
Because in archaeology, gettingit wrong is half the story.

Segments / Topics:
🪨 The Coso Artifact (a spark plug mistaken for an ancient relic)
🪓 The Paleolithic fraud of Shinichi Fujimura
🧪 How radiocarbon dating actually works (and where it fails)
🗺️ The North American dating debates: Clovis First, White Sands footprints, Cahokia, and more
⏳ Why even the best dates can shift an entire archaeological narrative



📬 Email: stratifiedpod@gmail.com
📸 Instagram: @stratifiedpod
🌀 Bluesky: stratifiedpod.bsky.social


Stratified Podcast Episode 3: Dating Disasters: Not the Romantic Kind
Episode Bibliography

The Coso Artifact
- Feder, Kenneth L. Frauds, Myths, and Mysteries: Science and Pseudoscience in Archaeology. Oxford University Press, 2020.

Shinichi Fujimura / Japanese Paleolithic Hoax
- Hudson, Mark. “The Ruins of the Past: Shinichi Fujimura and the Japanese Palaeolithic Hoax.” Antiquity, vol. 75, no. 290, 2001, pp. 976–983.
- "Shinichi Fujimura." Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinichi_Fujimura

Radiocarbon Dating Challenges
- Higham, Tom. Time's Anvil: England, Archaeology and the Imagination. Oxford University Press, 2014.
- Reimer, Paula J. et al. “The IntCal20 Northern Hemisphere Radiocarbon Age Calibration Curve (0–55 cal kBP).” Radiocarbon, vol. 62, no. 4, 2020, pp. 725–757.
- Prikryl, Daniel J. “Burned Rock Middens in Central Texas: Archaeological Features and Radiocarbon Dating Problems.” Bulletin of the Texas Archeological Society, vol. 61, 1990.

Anzick Site / Clovis Dating
- Rasmussen, M. et al. “The genome of a Late Pleistocene human from a Clovis burial site in western Montana.” Nature, vol. 506, 2014, pp. 225–229.

Kennewick Man
- Chatters, James C. Ancient Encounters: Kennewick Man and the First Americans. Simon & Schuster, 2001.
- Rasmussen, M. et al. “The ancestry and affiliations of Kennewick Man.” Nature, vol. 523, 2015, pp. 455–458.

White Sands Footprints
- Bennett, M. R. et al. “Evidence of humans in North America during the Last Glacial Maximum.” Science, vol. 373, no. 6562, 2021, pp. 1528–1531.

Buttermilk Creek (Debra L. Friedkin Site)
- Waters, Michael R. et al. “Pre-Clovis projectile points at the Debra L. Friedkin site, Texas—implications for the Late Pleistocene peopling of the Americas.” Science Advances, vol. 7, no. 36, 2021.

Santorini Eruption Dating Debate
- Friedrich, Walter L. Santorini: Volcano, Natural History, Mythology. Aarhus University Press, 2000.
- Manning, Sturt W. et al. “Fluctuating radiocarbon offsets observed in the southern Levant and implications for archaeological chronology debates.” Science Advances, vol. 4, no. 5, 2018.

Cahokia & North American Tree-Ring Dating
- Munoz, Samuel E. et al. “Cahokia’s emergence and decline coincided with shifts of flood frequency on the Mississippi River.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 112, no. 20, 2015, pp. 6319–6324.