Accelerator mass spectrometry radiocarbon dating technique

A more recently developed technique, known as the accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) radiocarbon dating technique, based on counting, in a mass spectrometer, the relative amount of radiocarbon to stable carbon isotopes in a sample (see Textbox 10). 

The impact of this new technique, which was called Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS), on the radiocarbon and archaeologist communities, was immediate and revolutionary. The introduction of AMS is indeed recognized by some as the third revolution in radiocarbon dating[22,23] and it has provided the opportunity to date very precious finds by collecting very small samples. The interest in developing the technique of AMS was so evident that, just few years after the measurements cited above, a first dedicated AMS system (based on a tandem accelerator) was designed and built [24] then, the first dedicated... 

A multi-wire counter was used by Libby to measure the radiocarbon content in archeological artifacts. The first sample he dated was a piece of acacia wood from furniture in Pharaoh Zoser s tomb at Saqqara, Egypt. About 20 g were used, and the date determined was 2,030 350 years BC. The technique developed rapidly, and only 10 mg of the same sample were dated in 1992 in the new National Ocean Sciences Accelerator mass spectrometry facility at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and gave an age of 4,115 34 years, i.e., within one cr error of the first (Libby) analysis. The Oeschger Counter is another indispensable tool on... 

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