Brief Outline of 27th Symposium on Age Measurement and Applications at CCR in 2014

The 27th symposium on age measurements with AMS (accelerator mass spectrometry) and EPMA (electron probe micro analyzer) systems, as well as their applications to geological and archeological samples, was opened on January 27th-28th, 2015, at Nagoya University. Symposium of this kind is held every year generally as an opportunity for users' meeting to publicize their results in utilizing the age-measurement facilities of the Center for Chronological Research (CCR), Nagoya University. In the symposium, the status reports of the AMS and EPMA systems were delivered firstly. Then, two reports were presented as the results of the program of the innovation of new technology and research for young scientists. Two special lectures were presented at the symposium: the first talk was entitled "Iron manufacture and circulation of iron products in ancient period on Japanese archipelago", given by Dr. Ryuhei Maruyama who retired from Faculty of Literature, Nagoya Women's University in 2009. He described a brief history on Japanese iron manufacturing and utilizing iron products in ancient period, and estimated that the first iron manufacture was conducted in the end of 6 century. The second talk entitled "The emplacement age of the Hikami granite, 440 Ma or 350 Ma? - A way to interpret incompatible age data" was given by Emeritus Professor Kazuhiro Suzuki who has retired from the Center for Chronological Research in 2012. He reviewed age data measured by K-Ar, CHIME, SHRIMP, Rb-Sr whole-rock isochron and LA-ICPMS U-Pb methods, and concluded that the southern Kitakami terrain is a Jurassic melange with granite, Silurian sediment and Devonian sediment as exotic blocks. This new concept will be submitted to the report in 2015 after further verification. Totally 22 oral reports and 3 poster reports were presented as contribution papers concerning the results on applications of the AMS as well as EPMA systems of the CCR. The fields of application are: study on solar activity based on 14C concentrations of tree rings; environmental applications, including human tooth analysis with 14C tracer; 14C dating analysis of charcoal and bone samples from archeological and cultural property samples; 14C dating study of paper documents; geological applications of 14C dating, including cored samples from Hokkaido; 14C dating application to cultural properties and archeological samples; studies on 14C calibration with Japanese wood; technical developments of sample preparation for 14C measurements; CHIME dating of monazite; technical study on CHIME dating for sub-micron sized samples. Finally, it should be noted that general participants who are not specialist of age measurements also joined the discussion and hopefully enjoyed it.