Comments on "Chronology of Vesuvius' activity from A.D. 79 to 1631 based on archeomagnetism of lavas and historical sources" by C. Principe et al., Bull Volcanol

Abstract

This paper shortly reviews the various factors which concur to the accuracy of archaeomagnetic dating of volcanic rocks: the error on the laboratory procedure; the assumption that the archaeomagnetic direction matches the paleofield direction present when the rocks formed; the limits of the model used for dating. The very small "analytical error" claimed in the paper by Principe et al. (2004) mainly depends on their focussing on the precision of laboratory procedures, disregarding the other sources of errors, which in fact are known in the literature to be far from negligible. © Springer-Verlag 2006.