Radiocarbon, or Carbon-14, dating is probably one of the most widely used and best known absolute dating methods. It was developed by J. R. Arnold and W. F. Libby in 1949, and has become an indispensable part of the archaeologist's tool kit since. It's development revolutionized archaeology by providing a means of dating deposits independent of artifacts and local stratigraphic sequences. This allowed for the establishment of world-wide chronologies.