Recent research of Southeast Asian fossil sites has demonstrated how the customary dating approach has fundamentally changed from applying a single isolated dating technique to a multi-modal synthetic methodology that utilizes several dating techniques and integrative contextual information. This presentation will examine the ins and outs of direct dating procedures applied to Southeast Asian cave sites in the past few years, and discuss the importance of aging fossils directly. The limitations of direct dating will also be addressed simultaneously, in particular minimum age misconceptions, context limitations, age ranges and preservation, as well as the importance of a comprehensive multi-sample and multi-dating technique approach to understand not only the age of the fossil, but the age of its deposition.