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Study of Bone Radiocarbon Dating Accuracy at the University of Arizona NSF Accelerator Facility for Radioisotope Analysis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2016

Thomas W Stafford Jr ,
A J T Jull ,
Klaus Brendel ,
Raymond C Duhamel  and
Douglas Donahue
Thomas W Stafford Jr
Affiliation:
Laboratory of Isotope Geochemistry, Department of Geosciences, University of Arizona, Tucson, 85721.
A J T Jull
Affiliation:
NSF Accelerator Facility for Radioisotope Analysis, University of Arizona.
Klaus Brendel
Affiliation:
Department of Pharmacology, College of Medicine, University of Arizona, Tucson, 85724
Raymond C Duhamel
Affiliation:
Department of Pharmacology, College of Medicine, University of Arizona, Tucson, 85724
Douglas Donahue
Affiliation:
NSF Accelerator Facility for Radioisotope Analysis, University of Arizona.
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Bone would seem to be an ideal material for 14C dating because this calcified tissue contains 20 weight per cent protein. Fossil bone, however, can lose most of its original organic matter and frequently contains contaminants having different 14C ages. Numerous 14C dates on bone have been available to archaeologists and geologists but many age determinations have been inaccurate despite over 30 years of research in the field following the first 14C age determinations on bone (Arnold & Libby, 1951). This situation remained unchanged until simple pretreatments were abandoned and more bone-specific fractions were isolated. The ideal solution is to use accelerator mass spectrometer 14C dating, which facilitates the use of milligram-sized amounts of highly purified compounds—an approach impossible to pursue using conventional 14C decay-counting methods.

Type
Research Article
Information
Radiocarbon , Volume 29 , Issue 1 , 1987 , pp. 24 - 44
Copyright
Copyright © The American Journal of Science 

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