Dr. Eric Blinman, director of the New Mexico Office of Archaeological Studies, explains how archaeomagnetic dating can help archaeologists determine the age of a site. When dirt is superheated, magnetic minerals in the soil realign to match the position of the Earth’s poles at the time of the last buring of the soil. This technique reads that "magnetic signature," and then scientists can match it to a calibration curve, a plot of the position of the Earth's poles—which are constantly moving—are at a given time in the past.