Figure 1
From: Pretreatment and gaseous radiocarbon dating of 40–100 mg archaeological bone
Graphs showing the collagen yields from small aliquots of bone according to variations in pretreatment conditions: (a) R-EVA 123, (b) R-EVA 124 (c) R-EVA 570, (d) R-EVA 548 and (e) R-EVA 1753. Step 1: duration of the demineralisation stage. Step 2: strength of HCl during demineralisation. Step 3: duration and temperature of the gelatinisation stage (HCl pH3). In (a–d) the horizontal grey line shows the collagen yield from a large aliquot (>500 mg material) of the same bone. A higher number of data points are present for R-EVA 1753 (e) as an aliquot of this bone was extracted alongside each batch of samples. The horizontal grey band in e shows the range in collagen yield of repeated large extractions from the background bone. The dashed lines at 1% show the guideline minimum requirement for reliable 14C dating. Asterisks mark extracts which were dated using the gas ion source (see Fig. 3).
