Radiocarbon AMS Dating of Pollen Extracted from Peat Samples

Abstract

We present 14C AMS measurements and discuss the extraction procedure used on pollen extracted from peat samples. Microscopic examination of the extracts shows that the procedure is sufficient to remove most non-pollen materials and results in an extract that is composed predominantly of pollen. The 14C dates that we obtained for pollen extracts from peat samples associated with the Mazama Ash layer are consistent with the range of bulk-sample dates obtained by others in previous studies. The limited measurement time and resulting precision (± 100 yr) of these initial measurements restrict our ability to draw firm conclusions from a comparison of the pollen extract dates with previous bulk-sample dates. We intend to adjust our procedure to improve the rejection of non-pollen materials and to increase the precision of our 14C measurements on pollen extracts from peat samples in future studies.