...in 2013, the Japanese Professor Fusa Miyake analysed individual tree rings and found a spectacular spike in carbon-14 content in the year 775. 'When you find wood at an archaeological site from that period, you can look for the spike by measuring the carbon-14 content of subsequent tree rings,' explains Kuitems. The spike tells you which tree ring grew in the year 775. And when the sample includes the bark, it is even possible to determine when the tree was felled. This approach was used to analyse a beam taken from the very foundation of the Por-Bajin complex. The sample...