Comparison of different bone pretreatment methods for AMS C-14 dating

Bone sample preparation has been studied in detail to find a suitable metho d for the processing of smaller sample amounts such as oracle bones. In a r ecent research project only 1 g of bone material will be available for radi ocarbon dating of these valuable bones with the AMS method. The standard me thods for the preparation of gelatin were compared with the amino acids tre ated by XAD-2 resin. Additionally, it was tested if the alkaline step in th e procedure may be skipped or not. According to our results we may conclude that for well preserved bones the gelatin production yields reliable resul ts. We could also show that the XAD-2 treatment is an effective method for the removal of humic acids. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reser ved.