Refining Background Corrections for Radiocarbon Dating of Bone Collagen at Orau

During the laboratory pretreatment of samples for radiocarbon dating, small amounts of carbon may be added to a sample. Contamination can be incorporated at any stage: during chemical pretreatment, combustion to CO 2 , graphitization, or accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) measurement. Such carbon contamination is often modern in age, and so can have an especially severe effect on samples older than ∼25 ka BP. During the extraction of collagen...