This is some great geochemical archaeology and fine instrument work from a well-built team with a strong multidisciplinary operation. Progress can be achieved

This is some great geochemical archaeology and fine instrument work from a well-built team with a strong multidisciplinary operation. Progress can be achieved like no other when the project leader is the one who not only has outstanding instrumental expertise, but also performs the _experiments_ themselves. Consistently over half a dozen major projects per year, this is high-performance operation. If you're not dedicated to taking good care of your instruments, they won't even function the entire year. For quantitation we've got one of the expensive benchtop models (and a retired one to restore), but they've got a _real_ expensive forklift model in addition, which makes this type of isotope analysis possible. Only one reason I don't do any geochemistry or archaeology either, just produce boring old invoiceable paperwork.