The Hallstatt plateau or the first millennium BC radiocarbon disaster, as it is called by some archaeologists and chronologists,[1] is a term used in archaeology to refer to a consistently flat area on graphs that plot radiocarbon dating against calendar dates.
[2] The radiocarbon dating method is hampered by this large plateau on the calibration curve in a critical period of human technological development.
[3] Wiggle matching involves taking a series of radiocarbon dates where the prior knowledge about the true calendar dates of the samples can be expressed as known differences in age between those samples, or occasionally as differences in age with some small uncertainty.
The series of radiocarbon dates can then be matched to the calibration curve to provide a relatively precise estimate of age.
Peter James cites Mike Baillie (who developed Irish oak dendrochronology): "The immediate conclusion is that it is impossible to sensibly resolve the radiocarbon dates of any samples whose true ages lie between 400 and 800 BC.