Carbon Dating Used to Date Adena Mound Culture

The Ohio Historical Society led the excavation of the Adena Mound in Chillicothe in 1901.
 Photo courtesy of the Ohio Historical Society.

Dean Narciso, of The Columbus Dispatch, has written an informative article about recent radiocarbon dating of a strip of tree bark originally found in the excavation of Adena Mound in 1901.

"It started when Richard Sisson, a former Ohio State University provost, called from his home in New Mexico because he was researching a book. He wanted the precise dates for the early Ohioans.

“We had to tell him we didn’t know,” Pickard said. “But people like to know specifics.”

Precision dating of Ohio’s antiquities is important, said Bradley T. Lepper, the society’s curator of archaeology. “It’s hugely important in history for a particular site to have meaning.""

-Dean Narciso, The Columbus Dispatch

For the full text, click here.

For more information about radiocarbon dating, click here.