Astronomers use "Julian day numbers" to indicate time. The Julian day number is the number of days since Noon GMT on January 1st 4713BC (in the Julian calendar). A time is then a single real number. For example, 00:30:00.0 UT January 1, 2013 (Gregorian), is 2456293.520833 (wikipedia)
So except to specify the epoch, the Julian calendar is not in use by astronomers to specify dates. There is no international standard equivalent to iso8601 for representing dates in the Julian calendar.
Ancient dates are often expressed as years before present, where "present" is 1950. 1950 is chosen as it preceeds most of the atmospheric nuclear testing that dumped massive amounts of C14 into the atmosphere and made carbon dating only valid for years before 1950.
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