IIT Gandhinagar plans to set a new lab for carbon dating. A centre for archeological science has already been set up in the institute and it will see a multi disciplinary approach to archeology, along with the establishment of a carbon dating lab.
Dr Sudhir Jain, director, IIT-Gn stated that in order to understand the heritage and roots of the country better, science and technology will be used. The centre will focus on application of archeological sciences through a number of disciplines, like civil, mechanical, electrical, chemical and material engineering and metallurgy. The Archeological Survey of India (ASI) is funding the laboratory, which will use modern chemical analysis and carbon dating tools to determine the age of artefacts from other parts of the country.
Carbon dating is a radiometric dating technique that uses the decay of carbon-14 to determine the age of organic materials like wood, leather etc as old as 58,000 to 62,000 years. The date of one such sample costs around Rs 58,000 – Rs 60,000 but Dr Jain said that they intend to do it free or at a nominal fee in order to make this science available to maximum number of people in the country.&n