Radiocarbon Dating a Paraffin Contaminated Moccasin: Detection and Removal of Paraffin from Skin-Based Samples

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

As part of an ongoing collaboration dating ethnographic collections, the University of Oregon sent a piece of a leather moccasin to the PSU Radiocarbon Lab for dating. The moccasin was recovered in 1938 from a near-surface deposit of Roaring Springs Cave, Oregon. Another moccasin from this context produced an anomalously old radiocarbon age – 7670±35 BP – and contamination from museum conservation was suspected. Ongoing research into accurately radiocarbon dating skin-based samples has resolved issues inherent in the complex chemistry of leather manufacturing (Davis et al., in press), but did not address the effects of curation practices. Conservants, insecticides, or modern material for mechanical repair can introduce additional contamination that confounds attempts to accurately radiocarbon date skin-based samples. Here we present work to identify one contaminant, paraffin, using Fourier-Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR) and to develop pretreatment methods for its removal using organic solvents and XAD purification. A set of known-age leather samples were purposefully contaminated with paraffin and the efficacy of pretreatments was evaluated with comparisons of FTIR spectra, C:N ratios, and 14C content. This experiment aimed to develop a method for detecting and removing radiocarbon-dead paraffin so paraffin contaminated skin-based samples like this moccasin can be accurately radiocarbon dated.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 40218.0