We can measure the age of an artifact by comparison of the activities a living sample with that of the artifact. This is so because the activity of the living sample represents the original activity of the artifact.
So, the steps involved in determining the age of an artifact is to measure the ratio of the parent and daughter nuclei. Then we use the half life of carbon to find out how many half lives have passed. Using this number of half lives that has passed, we can compute the age of the object.
