Amber Research Laboratory

Amber Research Laboratory, Department of Chemistry, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, NY 12601... 

This work was supported by an equipment grant towards the acquisition of an FT IR spectrophotometer from the National Science Foundation (Division of Anthropology grant no. 84-01207). We are grateful to Vassar College for its continuing support of the Amber Research Laboratory (ARL) this report constitutes ARL Contribution No. 72. 

Materials and Methods. The ancient wood samples were donated by R. Rowell (Forest Products Laboratory, Madison, Wisconsin, U.S.A.) and J. Amber (British Museum Research Laboratory, London, United Kingdom). All the samples were assumed to have been kept dry according to the information available. The macroscopic structure of all the samples appeared intact. Some characteristics of the samples are provided in Table I. Recent wood samples for comparison were obtained only for Douglas fir. 

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