Use of miniature C-14 counters in dating and authentication in the museum

Curators often do not understand the basis for the C-14 method of age determination and its limitations. Purpose of this paper is to describe the underlying principles, and how these must influence the interpretation of the radiocarbon measurement of a museum specimen in terms of age. Several techniques for that measurement are described briefly, focussing on the miniature proportional counters that were developed for the Smithsonian Institution, and three museum problems are described which were attacked, and some interesting further research on museum objects that has been proposed. Finally some projections on the future applications of the different methods are made, in the context of museum work