Diurnal variations in δ14C, δ13C and the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide in an urban forest were measured on 9 February 1999 to discriminate and quantify contributions from different CO2 sources. The biogenic CO2 concentration remained relatively constant throughout the day. However, anthropogenic CO2 concentration fluctuated with the atmospheric CO2 concentration, and seemed to be controlled by wind velocity and the amount of exhaust gases from fossil fuel burning. The vertical profiles of anthropogenic, biogenic, and total CO2 showed a constant concentration within forest during daytime because of the large vertical CO2 influx, strong winds, and neutral atmospheric condition. The biogenic contribution at night decreased from the forest floor upwards with a smooth gradient, while the anthropogenic contribution showed a direct mirror because of the location of respective CO2 sources—the vertical gradient of wind velocity and the horizontal CO2 supply.

We present the current status of accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) dating of iron artifacts at Seoul National University (SNU). In ancient iron production, charcoal was widely used as carbon for the smelting process, whereas coal is used in modern times. If reliable data could be obtained from carbon by using AMS, ancient iron artifacts could be traced to their production age. In normal acid treatment, it is not easy to extract carbon due to its colloidal property. The negative charge property of the carbon colloid, however, makes it possible for it to be precipitated with positive ions by dissolving the iron chemically. An extraction yield of the carbon incorporated in modern cast iron of about 70% is attained. More refined methods to increase the extraction rate are under progress for archaeological applications.

Some fragments of the Dead Sea Scroll manuscripts were contaminated with castor oil in the late 1950s. We have conducted experiments in order to establish if the AAA pretreatment cleaning procedures conducted on Dead Sea Scroll manuscript samples in the last two dating series (Bonani et al. 1992; Jull et al. 1995) were effective in removing oil contamination. Our experiments show that not all oil contamination can be expected to have been removed by the acid-alkaline-acid (AAA) pretreatment, and that the radiocarbon ages previously reported therefore cannot be guaranteed to be correct. Any samples contaminated with castor oil were most likely reported with ages that are too young by an unknown amount.

The Bronze and Iron Age cultures in Yemen have no parallels to the well dated cultures in the Syro-Palestinian region. Radiocarbon datings are therefore exceptionally important for the Yemenite archaeological excavation sites of Ma'layba and Sabir, the latter being the largest excavation site of the Sabir culture. Dating series were done in order to determine the architectural development of the sites and find time marks for the ceramic development. Sample materials were dated from the 2nd and 1st millennium before Christ. The 14C dating results allow statements about the cultural development in Ma'layba and Sabir as well as a comparison with the development of other regions in the surrounding, independent of only sparse available archaeological parallels.

We report here first results on the bulk soil organic carbon (SOC), apparent radiocarbon ages and δ13C characteristics of the tropical and subtropical forest soil in Dinghushan Biosphere Reserve (DHSBR). The forest oxisol in Dinghushan has developed during the Holocene. The δ13C variation curves in all three profiles may be divided into two sections. The upper section from 0 to 40 cm has δ13C values varying from −27.4 to −24.1‰, −27.5 to −22.2‰, and −24.4 to −20.1‰. in the Wukesong, Qingyunsi and Kengkou profiles, respectively. The lower section, including the 40–160 cm horizons, has a uniform δ13C. The mean δ13C values of the soil organic carbon could be used not only to discriminate between C3 and C4 plants, but also to distinguish between coniferous and broad-leaf plants.

Ostrich eggshell from archaeological sites remains largely free of more recent carbon contamination and as such is suitable material for radiocarbon dating. The carbonate fraction of the shell does, however, display an initial deficit in 14C, which causes the ages to appear 180 ± 120 yr too old.

Ma'rib is the most famous archaeological site in Yemen. The economical importance of Ma'rib resulted from an ecosystem that was based on irrigation and existed already in the second half of the 3rd millennium BC. In the middle of the 8th century BC Ma'rib rose to the capital of Saba and became the economical and cultural center of southern Arabia. In 1975 the German Archaeological Institute began to investigate and document the antique oasis systematically. Radiocarbon datings were of great importance for clarification of the building's history. Dating series extend from the 10th century BC to the 12th century AD. The temple, of which four building phases could be observed up to now, was used from 9th century BC till the end of the 4th century AD.

A new sealed double tube combustion method was developed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) to extract carbon from modern steels and ancient iron artifacts. Iron samples were chemically pretreated with 10% nitric acid, vacuum sealed in 6 mm quartz tubes with CuO, vacuum sealed again inside 9 mm quartz tubes, and combusted at 1000 °C for a minimum of 10 hr. The resulting CO2 was graphitized routinely using hydrogen reduction (Vogel et al. 1989). After the initial phase of development, carbon yields of 100% were consistently obtained. The activities of two modern high carbon steels (treated as process blanks, manufactured using only coal as the carbon source) were determined to be 0.0077 ± 0.0009 (n = 12, ± 1 σ) for a 1.3% C steel and 0.0090 ± 0.0038 (n = 12, ± 1 σ) for a 1.9% C steel, indicating that very little contamination is introduced during the sample preparation process. Since the Iron Age began less than 5000 years ago, these background uncertainties should introduce errors of no more than ±30 years to the radiocarbon ages of actual artifacts. Two ancient iron artifacts of known date were analyzed and demonstrate that the new methodology can be used to obtain the correct date of manufacture for iron objects, provided that they are made exclusively using charcoal that was contemporaneous with the manufacture of the artifact. Since only 1 mg of carbon is required for accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS), very small iron samples can now be analyzed (50 mg of a 2.0% C iron or 1 g of a 0.1% C iron). We anticipate that this methodology will be particularly useful to archeologists who currently have to rely on context to date iron artifacts.

The precise determination of the age of historical and geological events by radiocarbon dating is often hampered by the long intersection ranges of the measured data with the calibration curve. In this study we examine the possibility of narrowing the calibrated range of the 14C ages of earthquake-disturbed sediments (seismites) from the Late Holocene lacustrine section in the Dead Sea Basin. The calibrated ranges of samples collected from seismites were refined by applying stratigraphic constraints and tuning the calibrated ranges to known historical earthquakes. Most of the earthquakes fall well within the 1σ error envelope of the 14C age. This refinement demonstrates that the lag period due to transport and deposition of vegetation debris is very short in this arid environment, probably not more than a few decades. This assessment of seismite 14C ages attests to the validity of 14C ages in Holocene sediments of the arid area of the Dead Sea. Furthermore, it demonstrates our ability to achieve highly precise (correct to within several decades) 14C ages.

At the Leibniz radiocarbon lab, art and archaeological objects, often chemically conserved and thus potentially contaminated with respect to their 14C content, are treated using a computer-controlled “Soxhlet”-type series extractor. This device uses a continuous procedure of boiling and condensation of different solvents for extraction and vacuum filtration under constant process conditions. An elutrope sequence of five solvents that dissolve most customary conservation chemicals was selected. A study of these different contaminants applied to reference wood samples with subsequent accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) measurements demonstrates that their effective removal is dependent on the use of adequate solvents. For many contaminants (e.g. wood glue, methyl cellulose, Klucel®, sugar, and polyethylene glycol), routine acid-alkali-acid (AAA) treatment already yields satisfactory results, whereas for Caparol® and beeswax a relatively “mild” treatment with acetone, methanol, water, and subsequent standard AAA extraction is sufficient. Complete removal of rubber glue, epoxy resin, and paraffin can only be accomplished with our full set of solvents. The latter procedure is also appropriate when no or only incomplete information about the type of conservation material is available. For epoxy resin the contamination appears to be enriched in the alkali residue, and the easily soluble “humic acid” fraction, even after standard AAA treatment, gives satisfactory results. Two case studies on the application of the extraction procedures are presented.

The 47th Annual Conference on Bioassay, Analytical & Environmental Radiochemistry. 3–8 November 2001, Honolulu, Hawaii. The conference will consist of a series of vendor workshops and displays, oral presentations, and technical workshops. Abstracts are due by 15 July 2001. A limited number of abstracts will be assigned to oral sessions. For more information, contact Bill Burnett ([email protected]) or Kenneth G W Inn ([email protected]).

Radiocarbon concentration measurements in tree rings from Upper Silesia indicate significantly lower 14C concentration as compared to the concentrations occurring in “clean air” areas. This phenomenon is known as the Suess effect and is caused by contamination with inactive carbon that originates from fossil fuels combustion. This effect is observed in large urban and industrial areas. Samples for the measurements presented in the paper were collected in some of the largest cities in Upper Silesia: Gliwice, Ruda Śląska, and Chorzów. The samples were annual tree rings (Populus nigra, Pinus silvestris) covering years 1965–1992 and the atmospheric CO2 collected weekly between December 1994 and December 1995.

We compare radiocarbon accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) ages of wood samples subjected to a conventional acid-base-acid pretreatment with stepped combustion (ABA-SC) with results from the same samples subjected to an acid-base-wet oxidation pretreatment with stepped combustion (ABOX-SC) and cellulose extraction with stepped combustion (CE-SC). The ABOX-SC procedure has been shown previously to lead to lower backgrounds for old charcoal samples. Analyses of relatively uncontaminated “14C-dead” samples of wood suggest that backgrounds of 0.11 ± 0.04 pMC are obtainable for both the ABOX-SC and ABA-SC procedures. Where wood is significantly contaminated the ABOX-SC technique provides significantly better decontamination than either the ABA-SC technique or cellulose extraction alone, although CE-SC can produce comparably low backgrounds to the ABOX-SC procedure.

We also report the application of the ABOX-SC, ABA-SC and CE-SC procedures to wood samples associated with the chronologically controversial Rotoehu Ash eruption, New Zealand. New 14C-AMS dates from wood sampled from below the Rotoehu Ash span an age range of 43–50 ka BP consistent with recently presented OSL dates of 42–44 ka obtained for palaeosols beneath the ash.

Radiocarbon can be a valuable tracer of carbon cycling in elevated CO2 experiments. However, the standard method of calculating Δ14C, which corrects sample 14C activity for isotopic fractionation by correcting the sample δ13C to – 25‰, introduces significant errors to the reported 14C values. For elevated-CO2 treatments the error arises because the δ13C of the sample is not an appropriate measure of isotopic fractionation to use when correcting sample 14C activity for isotopic fractionation. A suggested replacement approach, developed in this paper, is to use the δ13C of the same type of material (e.g. leaf, soil organic matter) from the control (ambient-CO2) treatment in place of the sample δ13C in the correction.

The Dead Sea is a terminal lake located in the seismically active zone of the Syro–African Rift Valley. The water level of the Dead Sea has been receding dramatically during the last decades, resulting in significant entrenchment of wadis towards its shores. Exposed sections in fan deltas reveal abruptly changing facies of alluvial fan, beach, and shallow lacustrine environments. Our study focuses on soft sediment deformations of the load-structure type. Though of limited lateral extent, their field characteristics concur with the widely accepted criteria that define seismites. This paper demonstrates the potential of load-structures as seismic-chronological benchmarks through radiocarbon dating. We present the first evidence of 14C correlation between two types of seismites in different locations: load structure and mixed layer.

When dating unburnt bone, bone collagen, the organic fraction of the bone, is used. Collagen does not survive the heat of the cremation pyre, so dating of cremated bone has been considered impossible. Structural carbonate in the mineral fraction of the bone, however, survives the cremation process. We developed a method of dating cremated bone by accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS), using this carbonate fraction. Here we present results for a variety of prehistoric sites and ages, showing a remarkable success rate for this method.

We have measured radiocarbon contents in leaves collected from 15 sites in Japan, including mountain areas and big city areas for last three years. Comparing the radiocarbon contents in various areas, high 14C concentrations (80–100‰ as δ14C) are seen for the leaves from the mountain and country sites. On the contrary, low concentrations (5–40‰) were observed for the leaves from city region, especially near the road with heavy traffic. These results indicate that the atmosphere of the mountain and country sites in Japan is still clean but the CO2 gas coming from fossil non-radioactive carbon significantly pollutes the atmosphere of the city sites. The value of δ14C for the mountain areas implies that 14C produced by nuclear bomb test in 1960s still remains. The decrease of δ14C at heavy traffic sites in Tokyo is consistent with the increase of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere assuming that almost all CO2 gas in this region originates from the fossil fuel.