If so, are there any protocols set up for this process or papers outlining experiments that have used this process in the southeastern United States?
You should contact whichever lab is going to run the sample for you. Was going to do that from a redwood log here in California where a massive fire swept through a coastal area that has not experience any large forest fires for at least 100 years--Estimated must have been right after Europeans arrived in the early 1800s, or possibly at some time before, or since redwood takes a long time to rot and the charcoal is protected by the bark, could have been during the Native American period.
I should think so because forest history comes from the charcoal dating of different soil layers. That's how many workers-Archaeologists, Quaternary students, geologists, climatologists get their information on climate and vegetation - related studies such as ecology.
Obianuju P. Umeji
If you are able to split your soil samples into "paragenetic associations" (be it geogenic or anthropogenic) and if the sample batches you are interested in are big enough so as to rule out contamination by the matrix there is no objection to carry out radio-carbon dating in the way you desire.
DILL, H.G. (2009) Pyrometallurgical relics of Pb-Cu-Fe deposits in south-eastern Germany: An exploration tool and a record of mining history .- Journal of Geochemical Exploration, 100: 37-50.
DILL, H.G., TECHMER, A. and KUS, J (2013) Evolution of an old mining district between 725 and 1630 AD at the boundary between Thüringen and Bayern, SE Germany, using mineralogical and chemical markers, radio-carbon dating and coal petrography of slags.- Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences, 5: 215-233.
Available on request for download from the RG server
H.G.D.
Checked with my radiocarbon dating lab, and the answer is yes, as Obianuju P. Umeji wrote earlier, plus you do not need much charcoal from each layer, only the size of a pencil eraser. I just finished running some soil radiocarbon dating, and the lab costs start at about $300 per sample from the Direct AMS lab, and go up from there in the USA. Cheap rates in Russia and maybe eastern Europe too. I think you are more likely to have surviving charcoal in either the oak or Carya forests than the pine, because when pine burns it is usually reduced to ashes. I would float off the charcoal from soil samples, but maybe there is a better way than that?
Obviously, the cost of charcoal or any radiocarbon dating is another story because it takes a good chunk of the Research Fund but once done, one has a bearing of the vegetational history, palaeoecology and palaeoclimatic changes.
Obianuju P. Umeji
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