Paradise seeker, this is not a one minute post but it does demonstrate that so much groundwork so to speak has to be understood before arriving at a scientific answer.
I think a word is
necessary on the subject of archaeological labels. The Iron Age was followed
the Bronze Age which followed the Neolithic which followed the Mesolithic which in turn followed the Palaeolithic, the old Stone
Age. These are broad terms referring to a type of culture based roughly on the developmental
stages of tool materials. I.e. Neolithic (meaning from Greek; the “new stone”
age) is the last part or most recent part of the Stone Age and is characterised
by use of polished stone tools unlike the preceding lower, and therefore older
levels containing flaked stone tools exclusively. The thing to understand is
that these period names cannot be consistent with all locations since
developments took place in different spots on the map at different times. For
example the Neolithic could have been, and was in progress in North Africa
while parts of Europe were still the preceding epoch, the Mesolithic etc. So a specific name and date for a site is given
for one location and importantly at the specific physical occupation level for that site. One site
may have artefacts from a dozen cultural levels, this is very common in caves
where occupation episodes might cover one hundred thousand years or more. This
is one reason why archaeologists are painstaking in getting the stratigraphy
well defined and any prehistoric dig will have a vertical cross section of the
layers showing the horizons representing each superimposed layer laid over an older
layer and maked with pins and pegs, all carefully measured and photographed. The
term Prehistory broadly is before writing began.
So how do we know the dates of Egyptian kings? Well unlike the simplistic minds of creationists instead of looking only at one source, historians and archaeologists look at every possible reading of the evidence. In historic sources we have, most especially in Egypt, a head start because of the written annals of the kings and although not without error, the variables for gaps in dates are at least known and we have a sound chronology going back in time from Alexander in the fourth century CE to the earliest dynastic period 3,100 BCE. The great pyramid at Gizeh pyramids was built around 2500 BCE under the direction of the architect Hemiunu and never is there a mention of any flood in the region before or after.
So Egyptian chronology is easy peasy being historic compared to earlier stuff in the Neolithic. The later Neolithic covers the discovery of copper tools and is called the Chalcolithic (copper/stone age) and you may remember that Oetzie (or Otzi) the Ice Man found in 1991 frozen the Italian Alps, carried a copper axe and this was dated to late Neolithic/Chalcolithic and from 14C (carbon dating) it was confirmed he lived about 3350-3100 BCE, just before the historical Egyptian dynastic sequence.
I don’t know which country you are in but most national archaeological museums carry Egyptian material and it is possible to see in the Ashmolean in Oxford and the British Museum for example, the continuity of artefacts going back from the prehistoric Neolithic Egypt with pottery and stone tools continuing into the dynastic and historic period. Surprisingly, (well it surprised me) that there was a continuity of obviously Egyptian style which can be witnessed, demonstrating a cultural continuity from prehistoric into dynastic Egypt.
When items are found out of context, often it is the cultural motifs which determine its provenance but dating can be done as well even for things such as stone tools. (thermoluminesence and electron spin resonance are used) Archaeological dating methods are used age appropriate to an artefact or bone. So carbon dating is not used for early man because it only dates living objects, ideally younger than 30,000 years but doable up to 50,000. If your object is a very old skull, radio carbon will not work and other radiometric methods are used.
To summarise; in archaeology the first thing is to know the age of the soil horizon containing the artefact or bone. If a bone is found in the same soil horizon as a stone tool and a vole’s tooth for example, we have a lot of immediate information including the type of animals and cultural period from the style of the stone tool, all of which have known and limited time frames.
Geologists will determine the stratification by virtue of rock and soil horizons, small animals evolve quite rapidly and palaeontologists are part of the dating team in prehistoric digs which will give the parameter dates for extinct animal species. Other scientists such as entomologists will sift the soils to know what insects and other microfossils are present and others will look at pollen data with similar boundaries for determining the soil matrix date. It is these details along with the fauna and flora assemblages which pin-points specific climate conditions AND DATES for the region in prehistory supported by a myriad of earth scientist’s measurements to know the full sequence of climate data which is the backdrop to all dating in prehistory.
Therefore it is never a guess, it is a coordinated research based on multi-disciplinary scientific analysis which yields the date for the prehistoric periods. The historic periods as I said are by comparison easy and the distinction between the two is useful to appreciate.
Incidentally what I have touched on--and at the risk of boring the socks off you-- is hardly scratching the surface of the subject but needless to say, scientific evidence is not accessible to the closed minds of JWs and their ilk. However never let them get away with “carbon dating is faulty” because dendrochronology is absolute dating (i.e.to the year) and corroborates the accuracy of those 14C radiometric dates.