While curating the zooarchaeological collections, we have been discussing
a question about storing charcoal pieces from sites.  We know that for
the charcoal pieces to be useful for dating they should be stored in
aluminum foil not plastic.  We presume this is to prevent contamination
by organics. Does anyone have a citation for this and recommendations for
collecting and storing methods that will enable the charcoal to be used
for dating in the future?
 
Please address your responses to me directly.  I will attempt to
summarize them for the list.  Thank you very much in advance.
 
Julia Golden                            e-mail: [log in to unmask]
Curator, Dept. Geology                  tel: 319-335-1822
University of Iowa
Iowa City, IA  52242