All radiometric dating methods measure isotopes in some way.Most directly measure the amount of isotopes in rocks, using a mass spectrometer.Others measure the subatomic particles that are emitted as an isotope decays.
Carbon-14 moves up the food chain as animals eat plants and as predators eat other animals. It takes 5,730 years for half the carbon-14 to change to nitrogen; this is the half-life of carbon-14.
After another 5,730 years only one-quarter of the original carbon-14 will remain.
Absolute dating provides a numerical age or range in contrast with relative dating which places events in order without any measure of the age between events.
In archaeology, absolute dating is usually based on the physical, chemical, and life properties of the materials of artifacts, buildings, or other items that have been modified by humans and by historical associations with materials with known dates (coins and written history).
For example, techniques based on isotopes with half lives in the thousands of years, such as Carbon-14, cannot be used to date materials that have ages on the order of billions of years, as the detectable amounts of the radioactive atoms and their decayed daughter isotopes will be too small to measure within the uncertainty of the instruments.