Use carbon dating to determine the age of an object. An artifact classified as bone, horse, found in a site at Al-Hadithah, Iraq, is found to have a ¹⁴C radioactivity of 0.198 counts per second per gram of carbon. Living carbon-containing objects have an activity of 0.255 counts per second per gram of carbon. How long ago did the living carbon-containing source for the artifact die? The half-life of ¹⁴C is 5730 years.