Abstract
In this study, we provide a new application of laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) to evaluate whether ancient bones contain sufficient organic material before radiocarbon dating, which can avoid a complex preliminary analysis of the samples or unnecessary sampling. We examined, as the first step, the plasma induced by a UV (266 nm) ns-laser on pellets of compressed bone powder and, as the second step, the plasma induced on raw bones using different gas environments. First, we carried out a common method for analyzing the organic material using LIBS by observing CN band emission in an ArHe mixture environment; the sample that had not undergone significant diagenesis, containing enough collagen, could be well discriminated for further radiocarbon dating. Then spectral emission from nitrogen and carbon atoms was also recorded for these two types of samples in He and air environments. Calibration curves for carbon and nitrogen concentration of the bone were generated to indicate the residual amount of collagen after undergoing diagenesis (or degradation) and also to illustrate the possible carbonaceous pollution. The results proved that even if only several μg of the material is analyzed for each laser shot, LIBS has the potential to carry out in situ measurements in archaeological context while simultaneously performing a quantitative analysis.
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