Minimally Destructive Radiocarbon Dating of Bone.

ABSTRACT:

Rationale

Bone is commonly used in radiocarbon dating in archaeology and other disciplines. Despite advances in collagen extraction protocols, the process remains destructive, requiring sawing, drilling or crushing of bone material. While non-destructive approaches have recently been applied in ancient genomics and palaeoproteomics, no equivalent approach has been established for radiocarbon dating of bone. We explored whether this is possible using a series of experiments.

Methods

We experimented by using a water-based approach to extract soluble collagen from whole bone and teeth samples. We heated the samples in hot (75°C and 90°C) water for several hours. We obtained the soluble collagen fraction of the bone and purified and AMS dated the extracts. We used standard refer

SUBMITTER: Higham T 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12856783 | biostudies-literature | 2026 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature