Radiocarbon dating covers the most recent span of geo-archaeological time, back to c.55,000 years BP. The list of applications and disciplines it can be used for is wide-ranging and burgeoning. It is used widely in dating aspects of the Earth's environmental, oceanographic and atmospheric systems. It is used as a tracer in investigating residence times of carbon in soils, rivers, oceans and lakes, and to document the movements of oceanic water and its circulation and exchange with the atmosphere. It is also used in aerosol science, and is crucial to studies of Earth's changing climate. This wide relevance of the 14C isotope means that one must be something of a polymath to understand, and it was for this reason that in 1981 the first '14C and Archaeology' Symposium was held. Its aim: to provide a wider forum for studies of prehistoric chronology than would normally be allowed at the Radiocarbon conferences.

The 4th Symposium was held in Oxford in April 2002, and the proceedings that follow comprise thirty-one papers, covering archaeological dating research from the Altai to Antarctica, and from the Palaeolithic to the Medieval. (Oxford University School of Archaeology, Monograph 62, 2004).