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Improvements to the Pretreatment of Bone at Oxford

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2016

Christopher Bronk Ramsey ,
Thomas Higham ,
Angela Bowles  and
Robert Hedges
Christopher Bronk Ramsey
Affiliation:
Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit, University of Oxford, United Kingdom.
Thomas Higham
Affiliation:
Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit, University of Oxford, United Kingdom.
Angela Bowles
Affiliation:
Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit, University of Oxford, United Kingdom.
Robert Hedges
Affiliation:
Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit, University of Oxford, United Kingdom.
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Abstract

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Bone is one of the most widely used materials for dating archaeological activity. It is also relatively difficult to pretreat effectively and new methods are an area of active research. The purpose of the chemical pretreatment of bone is to remove contaminants present from burial and to do so in a way which does not add any additional laboratory contaminant. To some extent, these two aims must be balanced since, on the whole, the more complex the procedure and the more steps included, the greater the chance for contamination. At the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit (ORAU), the method used is a continuous-flow or manual acid/base/acid (ABA) treatment followed by gelatinization and ultrafiltration (based on Brown et al. [1988]; documented in Bronk Ramsey et al. [2000]). We find this overall method is very effective at removing more recent contamination in old bones. However, two aspects of the method have recently been improved and are reported here: the redesign of ORAU's continuous flow pretreatment and a new protocol in our pretreatment ultrafiltration stage.

Type
Articles
Information
Radiocarbon , Volume 46 , Issue 1: Proceedings of the 18th International Radiocarbon Conference (Part 1 of 2), Conference Editors: Nancy Beavan Athfield, Rodger J Sparks , 2004 , pp. 155 - 163
Copyright
Copyright © 2004 by the Arizona Board of Regents on behalf of the University of Arizona 

References

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