A Pretreatment Procedure for the AMS Radiocarbon Dating of Sub-Fossil Insect Remains

From the 18th International Radiocarbon Conference held in Wellington, New Zealand, September 1-5, 2003.Two pretreatment methods for accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) dating of insect remains were explored. One method involves a simple acid wash that removes carbonate, while the other is based on the industrial purification of chitin and results in isolation of polymeric chitosan. No contamination is observed from Maillard reactions during the deacetylation reaction used to isolate the chitosan. The methods were tested on Coleoptera samples from two Roman Britain sites. Our results demonstrate that both methods produce acceptable AMS dates that correspond well to the expected age of the deposits from which they came.The Radiocarbon archives are made available by Radiocarbon and the University of Arizona Libraries. Contact lbry-journals@email.arizona.edu for further information.Migrated from OJS platform February 202