T04_P04

20 years of radiocarbon dating using the ARTEMIS facility at the LMC14 National Laboratory: review of service and research activities

Beck L¹, Caffy I¹, Delqué-Količ E¹, Dumoulin J¹, Goulas C¹, Hain S¹, Moreau C¹, Perron M¹, Setti V¹, Sieudat M¹, Thellier B¹

¹LMC14, Gif-sur-Yvette, France

In 2001, five French public organizations (CNRS, CEA, IRD, IRSN and Ministère de la Culture) signed an agreement to purchase a new Accelerator Mass Spectrometer for providing radiocarbon dating services at the national level. The Laboratoire de Mesure du ¹⁴C (LMC14) was set up in Saclay (France) around ARTEMIS, an AMS system based on a 3MV Pelletron from National Electrostatics Corporation (NEC; Middleton, Wisconsin, USA) and installed early 2003 (Cottereau et al. 2007). In 2015, the LMC14 joined the Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l’Environnement, which allows to develop research projects in addition of the service activity. Since 2021, the LMC14 is a member of the IAEA Collaborating Centre “Atoms for Heritage” at the Université Paris-Saclay.

70 000 samples have been measured since then. Two-thirds of the samples have been prepared on site (wood, charcoal, carbonates, iron,…) and one-third in associated laboratories in Paris and Lyon (wood, charcoal, bones, ivory, hair,...). Over the past years, the LMC14 has participated to several international inter-comparisons (SIRI and GIRI) and has continuously improved its capabilities by developing new protocols for preparation and measurement (Dumoulin et al. 2017; Moreau et al. 2020).

In this presentation, radiocarbon dating services of the last 20 years for research laboratories, museums and environmental monitoring will be reviewed and recent results from research programs on environmental and archaeological studies will be highlighted.