Leaf Wax Lipid Extraction for Archaeological Applications

摘要: Plant wax lipid molecules, chiefly normal (n-) alkanes and n-alkanoic acids, are frequently used as proxies for understanding paleoenvironmental paleoclimatic change. These regularly analyzed from marine lake sediments even more in archaeological contexts, enabling the reconstruction of past environments direct association with records human behavior. Carbon hydrogen isotope measurements these compounds to trace plant type water-use efficiency, relative paleotemperature, precipitation, evapotranspiration leaf soil moisture, other physiological ecological parameters. lipids have great potential answering questions related human-environment interactions, being most part chemically inert easily recoverable terrestrial sediments, including those dating back millions years. The growing use this technique, comparison such data pollen phytolith analysis carbonate tooth enamel records, make it essential establish consistent, best-practice protocols extracting n-alkanes acids provide comparable information interpreting climatic, ecosystem, hydrological changes their interaction societies. © 2020 Authors. Basic Protocol 1: Total extraction Support Weighing total extract 2: Cleaning PSE cells Alternate Soxhlet Ultrasonic Separation by aminopropyl column chromatography 3: silver-nitrate-infused silica gel Preparation infused 10% silver nitrate 4: Methylation 5: Gas mass spectrometry (GC-MS) 6: ratio (GC-IRMS).