Bone Porosity and the Use of Mercury Intrusion Porosimetry in Bone Diagenesis Studies*

Abstract

Porosiry measurements made on archaeological bones have revealed very close relationships between changes in the porosity, remaining protein content and mineral alterations. The results have important implications for models that attempt to quantih the rates and extent of chemicul reaction between bone and its geochemical environment. We report here on a novel application of an established technique, mercury intrusion porosimetry, to investigate in more detail the pore size distribution of archaeological bones. Mercury intrusion porosimetry measures an 'intermediate' range of bone porosity, 'mesoporosity ', and produces data which permit the observation of signiJcant structure characteristics in the porosity of modem, laboratory altered and diagenetically altered bones.

A Nondestructive Prescreening Method for Bone Collagen Content Using Micro-Computed Tomography

“…The fabric of the well-preserved bones in general appears more uniform, while the bones that contain little collagen appear more variable and porous. This is what we would expect from previous studies of diagenetic alteration of bone, which found that diagenesis leads to an increase in the porosity of bone (Nielsen-Marsh and Hedges 1999;Hedges 2002).…”

Sub‐micron spongiform porosity is the major ultra‐structural alteration occurring in archaeological bone

“…The very small pores visible in Figure 3 correspond to the increased porosity between 0.007 and 0.1 µm diameter, at or below, the scale of the collagen fibril (0.1 µm diameter) (Weiner & Traub, 1986;Traub et al, 1989;Sarathchandra et al, 1999) previously reported for deproteinated bone (Holmes et al, 1964;Nielsen-Marsh & Hedges, 1999). Imaging of these very small pores was achieved using FEG-SEM, which has a very small, tight beam with low aberration and correspondingly small excitation volume in the sample.…”

“…In this paper we explore the application of an alternative approach, mercury intrusion porosimetry (HgIP), first reported by Nielsen-Marsh and Hedges (1999). This technique has advantages over the water sorption approach previously used to examine archaeological bone because it permits a more rapid and detailed assessment of the pore size distribution, although unlike water adsorption it cannot be applied to measure pores of <10 nm (0.01 µm).…”

Informative Potential of Multiscale Observations in Archaeological Biominerals Down to Nanoscale

“…These processes are complex because they are multi-factorial, non-linear in time and operate in a heterogeneous way and at different structural levels (Hedges 2002;Budd et al 2000;Kohn et al 1999;Reiche et al 2002aReiche et al , 2003Dauphin and Williams 2004;Geigl 2002;O'Connor et al 2011;Godfrey et al 2002;Albéric et al 2014;Large et al 2011;Baud and Tochon-Danguy 1985;Jans et al 2004;Nielsen-March and Hedges 1999;Nielsen-Marsh et al 2007;Collins et al 2002).…”