Well don’t leave us in suspense, since you seem to have the answer.
I see no explicit mention yet of a significant problem, which is that during some periods C14 creation in the upper atmosphere exceeded the decay rate ! What this means is that the function mapping C14 level to date of carbon capture is multi-valued. This is in addition to other sources of uncertainty. (There is one technique – “wiggle matching” – to cope with this.)
Googling just now, I could only find hints of the phenomenon at Wikipedia, but this page has a graph showing the problem. Look at the graph mid-page and suppose that the uncalibrated date is 2960 BP. Read across the graph to see that the true date (even ignoring uncertainty bars) could be as early as 1260 BC or as late as 1120 BC.
I think the major flaw in dating carbon is that you really need other elements mixed in to make the night worthwhile. I tried taking some graphite out to dinner and a movie and it wasn’t all I had hoped for.
[Moderating]
rtfgirl, if you know the answer, then why did you ask the question?
If your intention is to start some kind of a debate on this issue, please start a new thread in the Great Debates forum clearly explaining your arguments. I’m going to close this one, since it doesn’t seem that you are looking for factual information.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator