Study of Bone Radiocarbon Dating Accuracy at the University of Arizona NSF Accelerator Facility for Radioisotope Analysis

Bone would seem to be an ideal material for 14 C dating because this calcified tissue contains 20 weight per cent protein. Fossil bone, however, can lose most of its original organic matter and frequently contains contaminants having different 14 C ages. Numerous 14 C dates on bone have been available to archaeologists and geologists but many age determinations have been inaccurate despite over 30 years of research in the field following the first 14 C age determinations on bone (Arnold & Libby, 1951). This situation remained unchanged until simple pretreatments were abandoned and more bone-specific fractions were isolated. The ideal solution is to use accelerator mass spectrometer 14 C dating, which facilitates the use of milligram-sized amounts of highly purified compounds—an approach impossible to pursue using conventional 14 C decay-counting methods.