Final answer:
Absolute dating techniques, like radiocarbon dating, are used to determine the exact year a historical event took place by measuring the decay of carbon-14 in organic materials.
Step-by-step explanation:
The piece of information about past societies that can ONLY be determined using absolute dating techniques is C) The exact year a historical event took place. Absolute dating methods, such as radiocarbon dating, use the physical and chemical properties of artifacts and structures modified by humans to establish their age. This is different from relative dating methods which can only determine the order of events or the relative ages of artifacts, without providing numerical ages. By measuring the amount of remaining carbon-14 in organic materials, for example, absolute dating can approximate the year in which an organism died, within a certain margin of error.