Animal, Vegetable, or Mineral?

I read an interesting tidbit in the Parade Magazine, Sunday Oregonian, April 19, 2009 in the Ask Marilyn column. A reader asked about carbon dating cave paintings made with paint composed of minerals. Marilyn replied that carbon dating can determine the age of artifacts made of organic matter such as cloth, bone, and wood. If a painting was done in charcoal it could be dated because the charcoal was made from charred bones or maybe tree limbs.

However paints made from minerals such as azurite, cinnabar, or lapis cannot be dated with carbon dating techniques because there are no organic components. But Marilyn mentions if an artifact is made of both rock and wood then the wood could be dated which might determine the age of the object. She also goes on to say that dating archaeological artifacts is a very complex problem but is of great importance to historians.