It would be nice to have a method of absolute dating that was reasonably reliable and accurate but that is simply not the case. Radiocarbon dating and other radiometric dating techniques give an illusion of mathematical precision which is not justified. The assumption of constant rates of decay under any condition (for radiometric dating) and the assumption of reasonably constant carbon levels (for C 14 dating) in the past would not apply under dynamic and catastrophic conditions involving massive electrical discharges, floods, volanic eruptions, etc.
The fact that C14 dating needs to be "calibrated" is a tip off that all is not well.
Charles Ginenthal deals with this topic in
The Extinction of the Mammoth(1997) in pages 153-202.
In dating of ancient Egyptian objects, C14 dates which do not conform with the accepted chronology are discarded as contaminated and not published, those that do, are published. This is hardly good science. Since there is no means of determining what is contaminated and what is not, other than its' support of the accepted chronological scheme, it amounts to nothing more than circular reasoning.
Ginenthal (p163) quotes a Harvard professor:
If a C14 date supports our theories, we put it in the main text. If it does not entirely contradict them, we put it in the footnote. And if it is completely 'out of date', we just drop it.
As an example of this, Ginenthal cites the results of a test performed by the British Museum on palm kernels and mat reed from the tomb of Tutankhamon, who supposedly lived in the 14th C BCE. The results were 899 BCE and 846 BCE, a discrepency of almost 500 years. Those dates were never published.
In "The Pitfalls of Radiocarbon Dating,"
Pensee Volume IV, Velikovsky wrote:
But as the method was refined, it started to show rather regular anomalies. First, it was noticed that, when radiocarbon dated, wood grown in the 20th century appears more ancient than wood grown in the 19th century. Suess explained the phenomenon by the fact that the increased industrial use of fossil carbon in coal and in oil changed the ratio between the dead carbon C12 and the C14 (radiocarbon) in the atmosphere and therefore also in the biosphere. In centuries to come a body of a man or animal who lived and died in the 20th century would appear paradoxically of greater age since death than the body of a man or animal of the 19th century, and if the process of industrial use of fossil, therefore dead, carbon continues to increase, as it is expected will be the case, the paradox will continue into the forthcoming centuries
http://www.varchive.org/ce/c14.htm
Ginenthal cites several cases where the remains (hunted by humans) of extinct elephants such as mastodons and mammoths [who are thought to have become extinct, and supported by radiocarbon dating, a minimum of 12,000 years before the present] are found associated with pottery that cannot be dated beyond 3000 BCE and is probably much later. Also cited, are scenes painted in an Egyptian tomb, from the dynastic (historical) era, of a mammoth.
see:
Baruch Rosen, "Mammoths in ancient Egypt?"
Nature, vol. 369, (June 2, 1994) p. 364
Britain's Science and Engineering Research Council conducted a test where objects of known age were sent to 38 labs for C14 dating. Only 7 labs gave reasonably accurate dates while the other 31 were way off, some by thousands of years.
Ginenthal wrote:...a tree growing next to an airport added so much additional old carbon to its wood tissues from airplane exhaust furmes which it had processed via photosynthesis, that when tested, its wood gave a radiocarbon date of 10,000 years. (footnote 71) Any animal that ate the foilage of that ree or the grasses growing in the vicinity, subject to the same conditions, would absorb that old carbon in far greater proportions...its radioactive age would appear much older than it actually was.
footnote 71- Bruno Huber, "Recording Gaseous Exchanges Under Field Conditions", The Physiology of Forest Trees, K. V. Thinmann ed., (New York, 1958) p. 194
The fact of the matter is that C14 dating has failed too many tests to be considered reliable. Why should we accept a date that is derived solely from radiocarbon analysis when that method has been shown to be unreliable when put to the test?
Nick