ION MICROPROBE ANALYSES OF ANCIENT HUMAN BONE

At the Rossendorf nuclear microprobe facility, a beam of protons with MeV energy was used to analyse ancient human bones of the Merowingian period (6-8th century AD), Emitted X-rays were detected to determine t he elemental composition of the bones and to estimate the influence of the burial environment on the elemental content of the skeletons, In cross sections of human femora, a different behaviour of the radial di stributions of the main and trace elements like P, Ca, Mn, Fe, Zn, Br, and Sr was observed using lateral-resolved mu PIXE. This result indic ates post mortem mineral exchange processes and diagenetic alteration during burial of bone tissue in soil. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V.