Practice question · True or false
An object lying deeper than another can still be the younger of the two.
Hints
- What could put a young object low down?
- A pit, a burrow, a plough.
Show the answer
True
Why
True. Superposition holds only for undisturbed deposits. A grave cut, a rubbish pit, a burrowing animal or a plough can all place recent material below older layers, which is why excavation records contexts and their relationships rather than depths, and why a single intrusive find can misdate an entire sequence.
Practise Stratigraphy and Relative Dating
The app has 5 more questions on this lesson, and keeps your place in the course. History I is free to start.
More questions on Stratigraphy and Relative Dating
- Replay this section’s formation. Order the events from first to last.
- Match each stratigraphic term to its definition.
- Each observation gives a terminus post quem or a terminus ante quem for the wall. Sort them.
- The law of superposition says lower layers are older. Give a situation where a strict reading of it produces…
- A pit cut through three layers contains a coin of 200 CE. Why does the coin date the pit rather than the…
- Which processes can put OLDER objects into YOUNGER deposits?