Radiocarbon Laboratory Core Support for Archaeometry

在美国国家科学基金会的支持下，朗博士和他的同事们将继续他们的研究，以改进放射性碳定年技术，并以合理的成本和合理的时间为考古界提供准确的日期。该实验室将继续寻找和分析具有人类学意义的样本。它将应用技术来测定非标准材料的年代，如花粉和单个骨骼氨基酸。它还将继续研究以改进测年技术本身，并将重点放在用于液体闪烁计数的苯中杂质的原因和性质上。为了最有效地工作，考古学家需要确定出土材料的绝对年龄，而放射性碳定年法为实现这一目标提供了主要技术。像木炭这样的有机材料的年代可以追溯到4万年或更少，而龙博士的实验室现在能够将这种技术的范围扩展到大约7万年。该实验室也有能力分析非常少量的物质，并净化受污染的遗骸，如骨头。通过这种年代测定工作，该实验室解决了重要的人类学问题，例如植物何时在新大陆首次被驯化，从而揭示了文化复杂性的发展。这笔拨款很重要，因为它将允许实验室继续其服务和方法开发功能。它将帮助许多考古学家进行研究。

With National Science Foundation support Dr. Long and his colleagues will continue their research both to improve the radiocarbon dating technique and to provide accurate dates at a reasonable cost and in reasonable time to the archaeological community. The laboratory will continue to seek out and analyze samples of anthropological significance. It will apply techniques which allow the dating of non-standard materials such as pollen and individual bone amino acids to such samples. It will also continue research to improve the dating technique itself and will focus on the cause, nature of impurities in benzene which is used in liquid scintillation counting. To work most effectively, archaeologists need to assign absolute ages to excavated materials and radiocarbon dating has provided the primary technique for accomplishing this goal. Organic materials such as charcoal dating to 40,000 years or less are routinely dated by this means and Dr. Long's laboratory is now able to extend the technique's range to ca. 70,000 years. The laboratory also has the ability both to analyze very small amounts of material and to purify contaminated remains such as bone. Through such dating work, the laboratory has addressed important anthropological questions such as when plants were first domesticated in the New World and thus shed light on the development of cultural complexity. This grant is important because it will permit the laboratory to continue both its service and method development functions. It will aid many archaeologists in their research.