Thursday 10 March, 11AM CET
DR. RACHEL WOOD
ABSTRACT: Radiocarbon dating plays a central role in the development of archaeological and palaeoenvironmental chronologies during the last 50,000 years. Research and laboratories are focused in the wealthier countries in northern Europe and North America, so techniques have been developed to suit temperate regions where organic preservation is good. For example, 100s of research papers examine how protein can be extracted from bone and purified to enable accurate dates to be produced directly on human bone or bone tools. However, organic preservation is poor in arid and tropical regions, and it is rarely possible to extract enough protein from bone beyond around 2000 years. It is crucial that alternative materials and methods are developed to enable high quality chronologies to be built across vast swathes of the world, and we have started to examine whether carbonate within tooth enamel may help fill this gap. This talk will examine several case studies to illustrate the challenges in dating bone in Australia and South East Asia, explore the implications for understanding some major archaeological research questions, and present some of the new methods we have been developing to better understand enamel diagenesis and radiocarbon date tooth enamel.