RADIOCARBON AMS DATING OF POLLEN EXTRACTED FROM PEAT SAMPLES

We present C-14 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 C-14 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 C-14 measurements on pollen extracts from peat samples in future studies.