Wiggle Matching for Radiocarbon Dating Korean Artifacts with Biannual Samples

This paper reports the application of radiocarbon wiggle matching for Korean wooden artifacts such as furniture and Buddhist statues for precise dating. Ten biannual samples of 20 years (AD 1249-1268) for AMS (accelerator mass spectrometry) radiocarbon measurements were prepared from a board of the pedestal for Buddhist statue at Jeongsusa (temple) in Kangwhado, Korea, which was dendrochronologically dated. The average 95.4% confidence interval of radiocarbon dating without wiggle matching was 123 year. When wiggle matching technique was applied, it became 37 year, 3.3 times smaller than that without wiggle matching. The results indicated that wiggle matching technique using the calibration curve for northern hemisphere (IntCal04: International radiocarbon calibration curve announced in 2004) can produce precise dates for Korean wooden artifacts which possess as much as 20 tree rings.