If the logs are indeed radial, then one could probably take a core sample and do a radiocarbon wiggle match, to get a more precise felling date for the logs.

However, there would be an issue with this that is inherent with the unfortunate shape of the radiocarbon calibration curve at the time of the Old Kingdom. The issue is that there is a so-called radiocarbon plateau at this point in time. What this means is that for a broad length of time the radiocarbon curve remains relatively flat (rather than decreasing as one moves forward in time). So when you try to calibrate a radiocarbon date, regardless of that radiocarbon ages precision, you will get a large uncertainty in its calibrated date.

So below is an example. I have taken an average radiocarbon age from two samples associated with Sneferu (this would be a piece of textile and a short lived plant material radiocarbon ages of 4090 +/- 29 and 4140 +/- 30 BP, to average 4125 +/- 30 BP, both of which taken from Meidum) (See here Bronk Ramsay et al 2010 [www.researchgate.net]. Using this radiocarbon age I have calibrated it against IntCal20 and obtained the following graph




You can see that this radiocarbon calibration would give a date for the material as being about a 1 in 3 probability the material dates to 2870-2800 and a 2 in 3 probability that it dates between 2775 and 2580. Overall this is a 300 year spread of possible dates, and recall that this is on samples from short lived material thought to come from Sneferu's reign. Should the logs in the bent pyramid have been felled in the reign of Sneferu then that even with a wiggle-match we may not get a precise date for their outer ring. We might get lucky though.


It is worth noting though that Bronk Ramsay et al. 2010, was able to obtain a calendar date for Sneferu between 2649-2582 (at 95.4% probability) by using a Baysian analysis of the sequence of radiocarbon dates of a large number of dates associated with many different kings. These radiocarbon dates would have been obtained from carefully selected samples, virtually all from short lived samples. This would likely have been because of the problem of not knowing which part of a tree a wooden sample came from, or indeed if the wood had even been reclaimed and re-purposed.

Jonny

The path to good scholarship is paved with imagined patterns. - David M Raup