Abstract:The study aims to establish several definite criteria which will differentiate Romanian amber and Baltic amber to certify the local or Baltic origin of the materials found in archaeological sites on the Romanian territory, by using light microscopy and performing analytical methods, such as Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy-variable angle reflectance and liquid chromatography with mass spectrometry detection. Experiments especially by Fourier transformed infrared spectroscopy, were applied to a wide range of samples with controlled origin. The methods were optimised and resulted in premises to apply the techniques to analysis of the archaeological material.© Versita Warsaw and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.

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This work focuses on using analytical methods, such as Fourier transform Infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) with mass spectrometry (MS) detection to assess archaeological and geological amber. The main goal of this study is to apply the previously developed and optimized analytical methods in verifying criteria to ascribe and characterize the origin of materials found in archaeological sites. The proposed LC-MS method was successfully applied for the quantification of succinic acid content both in geological and archaeological samples of amber and offers excellent linearity between 0.1 and 5µg mL−1. The developed FTIR method provided some criteria which is able to differentiate between Baltic and Romanian amber (Romanite) that furthermore validates on archaeological amber artefacts.

A simple, fast and sensitive high-performance liquid chromatography/electrospray ionization-mass spectrometry method is described and validated in terms of linearity, accuracy/recovery and reproducibility, as well as limit of detection for the determination of ascorbic acid from grape (Vitis vinifera L.) samples from Murfatlar vineyard. Good linearity (correlation factor > 0.9970) was achieved in the concentration range 0.5-15 mg mL À1 for AA in acetic acid 0.1% solution. The obtained RSD values (below 5%) indicated excellent repeatability of the proposed method. The limit of detection was 0.32 mg mL À1 while the recovery ranged between 96.86 and 102.41%. The advantages of the method are: small amounts of sample and solvents, short analysis time and minimum steps for sample preparation.