I discuss here the basis of a comparison of methods for radiocarbon dating and introduce a new index for the relative merit of a system,factor of counting capacity,that is generally more appropriate than the commonly usedfactor of merit.The merit of a dating system cannot be based on a single figure but other factors must also be considered. A comparison of the gas proportional, liquid scintillation and accelerator mass spectrometry technique is presented that for gas proportional counters is

more »

... sed on a multi-detector system rather than a single detector.