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A Reassessment of the Routine Pretreatment Protocol for Radiocarbon Dating Cremated Bones

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2016

Christophe Snoeck ,
Richard A Staff  and
Fiona Brock
Christophe Snoeck*
Affiliation:
Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art, University of Oxford, Dyson Perrins Building, South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3QY, UK. Current address: Research Unit: Analytical, Environmental & Geo-Chemistry, Dept. of Chemistry, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, ESSC-WE-VUB, Pleinlaan 2, 1050 Brussels, Belgium.
Richard A Staff
Affiliation:
Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art, University of Oxford, Dyson Perrins Building, South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3QY, UK.
Fiona Brock
Affiliation:
Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art, University of Oxford, Dyson Perrins Building, South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3QY, UK. Current address: Cranfield Forensic Institute, Cranfield Defence & Security, Cranfield University, Defence Academy of the United Kingdom, Shrivenham, SN6 8LA, UK.
*
*Corresponding author: Email: csnoeck@vub.ac.be.
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Abstract

In the late 1990s, it was demonstrated that reliable radiocarbon dates could be obtained directly from cremated bone. Many 14C laboratories have since used a protocol for pretreating cremated (calcined) bones that consists of consecutive treatments with bleach and acetic acid to remove organic matter and extraneous or diagenetic carbonate, respectively. In most instances, the bleach used is sodium hypochlorite, although in recent years the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit (ORAU) has used acidified sodium chlorite instead. However, properly calcined (white) bones should not contain any organic material; hence, the bleach treatment is potentially unnecessary. This article describes studies investigating the effectiveness of bleach (and the specific bleach used) during pretreatment of calcined bone, and demonstrates that 14C dates on six cremated bone samples are statistically indistinguishable whether or not the initial bleach step is applied.

Keywords

pretreatmentcremated bonebleach
Type
Research Article
Information
Radiocarbon , Volume 58 , Issue 1 , March 2016 , pp. 1 - 8
Copyright
© 2016 by the Arizona Board of Regents on behalf of the University of Arizona 

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