Radiocarbon dating archaeological bone typically requires 300-1000 mg material using standard protocols. We report the results of reducing sample size at both the pretreatment and C measurement stages for eight archaeological bones spanning the radiocarbon timescale at different levels of preservation. We adapted our standard collagen extraction protocol specifically for <100 mg bone material. Collagen was extracted at least twice (from 37-100 mg material) from each bone. Collagen aliquots containing <100 μg carbon were measured in replicate using the gas ion source of the AixMICADAS. The effect of sample size reduction in the EA-GIS-AMS system was explored by measuring C of collagen containing either ca. 30 μg carbon or ca. 90 μg carbon. The gas dates were compared to standard-sized graphite dates extracted from large amounts (500-700 mg) of bone material pretreated with our standard protocol. The results reported here demonstrate that we are able to reproduce accurate radiocarbon dates from <100 mg archaeological bone material back to 40,000 BP.

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http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6440986PMC
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-41557-8DOI Listing

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