Soon after the publication of Libbys 1949 paper in Science', universities around the world began establishing radiocarbon-dating laboratories, and by the end of the 1950s there were more than 20 active  research laboratories. It quickly became apparent that the principles of radiocarbon dating were valid, despite certain discrepancies, the causes of which then remained unknown.
The development of radiocarbon dating has had a profound impact on archaeologyoften described as the "radiocarbon revolution". In the words of anthropologist R. E. Taylor, " data made a  prehistory possible by contributing a time scale that transcends local, regional and continental boundaries". It provides more accurate dating within sites than previous methods, which usually derived either from stratigraphy or from typologies (e.g. of stone tools or pottery); it also allows comparison and synchronization of events across great distances. The advent of radiocarbon dating may even have led to better field methods in archaeology since better data recording leads to a firmer association of objects with the samples to be tested. These improved field methods were sometimes motivated by attempts to prove that a  date was incorrect. Taylor also suggests that the availability of definite date information freed archaeologists from the need to focus so much of their energy on determining the dates of their finds, and led to an expansion of the questions archaeologists were willing to research. For example, from the 1970s questions about the evolution of human behaviour were much more frequently seen in archaeology.
The dating framework provided by radiocarbon led to a change in the prevailing view of how innovations spread through prehistoric Europe. Researchers had previously thought that many ideas spread by diffusion through the continent, or by invasions of peoples bringing new cultural ideas with them. As radiocarbon dates began to prove these ideas wrong in many instances, it became apparent that these innovations must sometimes have arisen locally. This has been described as a "second radiocarbon revolution", and with regard to British prehistory, archaeologist Richard Atkinson has characterized the impact of radiocarbon dating as "radical[...] therapy" for the "progressive disease of invasionism". More broadly, the success of radiocarbon dating stimulated interest in analytical and statistical approaches to archaeological data. Taylor has also described the impact of AMS, and the ability to obtain accurate measurements from very small samples, as ushering in a third radiocarbon revolution.
Occasionally, radiocarbon dating techniques date an object of popular interest, for example, the Shroud of Turin, a piece of linen cloth thought by some to bear an image of Jesus Christ after his crucifixion. Three separate laboratories dated samples of linen from the Shroud in 1988; the results pointed to 14th-century origins, raising doubts about the shroud's authenticity as an alleged 1st-century relic.
Researchers have studied other isotopes created by cosmic rays to determine if they could also be used to assist in dating objects of archaeological interest; such isotopes include Helium-3|, Beryllium-10|, Neon-21|, Aluminium-26|, and Chlorine-36|. With the development of AMS in the 1980s it became possible to measure these isotopes precisely enough for them to be the basis of useful dating techniques, which have been primarily applied to dating rocks. Naturally occurring radioactive isotopes can also form the basis of dating methods, as with potassium–argon dating, argon–argon dating, and uranium series dating. Other dating techniques of interest to archaeologists include thermoluminescence, optically stimulated luminescence, electron spin resonance, and fission track dating, as well as techniques that depend on annual bands or layers, such as dendrochronology, tephrochronology, and varve chronology.