Archaeological Chemistry at EMU: Combining Chemical Analysis and Radiocarbon Dating

Many artifacts are too small or fragile to survive the standard methods for preparing samples for radiocarbon dating. Plasma chemical oxidation (PCO) can be used to extract organic carbon from inorganic carbon matrices to date rock paintings and to date fragile organic materials without destroying them, allowing for repeated dating of the same sample with accelerator mass spectrometry. Chemical analysis with ambient ionization mass spectrometry and other methods can provide further information about such materials. Our current projects seek to determine the accuracy, precision and minimum sample size that can be AMS dated with PCO sample preparation, allowing us to gather more information from small and fragmentary objects that could not be dated otherwise.