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Hydroxyproline Dating: Experiments on the 14C Analysis of Contaminated and Low-Collagen Bones

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 February 2016

Anat Marom
Affiliation:
Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3QY, United Kingdom
James S O McCullagh
Affiliation:
Chemistry Research Laboratory, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3TA, United Kingdom
Thomas F G Higham
Affiliation:
Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3QY, United Kingdom
Robert E M Hedges
Affiliation:
Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3QY, United Kingdom

Abstract

Dating of the amino acid hydroxyproline from bone collagen has been shown to produce accurate and reliable radiocarbon dates. This article presents further application of the method demonstrating it can be used to obtain dates for both low-collagen and contaminated bones, extending the capability of 14C dating archaeological bone from conventional limits imposed by alternative pretreatment methods. The method therefore has the potential for significantly benefiting the accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) dating community in the 14C dating of archaeological bone.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © 2013 by the Arizona Board of Regents on behalf of the University of Arizona 

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Footnotes

2

Current address: Kimmel Centre for Archaeological Science, Weizmann Institute of Sciences, POB 26, Rehovot 76100, Israel.

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