Chalon-sur-Saône trip

Together with Harald Floss and his team, Maria Oddo and Tom Higham returned to the Musée Denon in Chalon-sur-Saône to resample some of the Aurignacian artefacts from the site of Grotte de la Verpillière in Germolles, eastern France. Maria's work whilst at the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit as part of the PalaeoChron project was to focus on the chronometry of the site, but the work has been challenging due to the presence of organic contamination derived from conservation work on the important pieces. The first round of dates was problematic and so we returned to sample material again, this time to extract HYP (hydroxyproline) for AMS dating and thereby eliminate the carbon contamination.

We will report the updated results in due course! Below is one of the split-based points which is being analysed at the moment.