compounds listed in tables 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 (except for weathering, handling, and treatment. This is why core methyl fenchyl succinate, methyl bornyl succinate, and samples were removed from the objects by microdrilling. dibornyl succinate, which, due to their extremely small In figure 5, the THM-Py-GC/MS results for the dark surface peak sizes, did not contribute significantly to the total and inner core of a large piece of reference amber, it is peak area). Table 6 shows that the succinate content in the clear that the surface has become partially depleted in single known sample of Baltic amber was high, whereas succinate, with few other changes apparent. Table 8 almost no succinate was detected in the Dominican shows the results for pairs of surface and core samples ambers, copal resin, sandarac resin, or pine resin. The from the amber objects, and figure 6 shows a typical succinate content in the ambers of unknown origin chromatographic result (for 83.AO.202.1, cat. no. 12). The appeared rather variable, but the presence of the other surfaces of these objects have also been depleted in markers in table 1 placed them firmly in the Baltic succinate, but the sesquiterpenes and diterpenes also category. The “amber varnish” was found to contain a have been radically reduced. These compounds are not high concentration of a drying oil with no detectable chemically bound to the polymeric network of the amber, succinate content. Fortunately, the test results for dried which would make them more susceptible to leaching amber oil residue showed no significant amount of any of during burial. the Baltic marker compounds listed in table 1 except for borneol, indicating that amber oil treatment should not produce a “false positive” identification for Baltic amber. In the THM-Py-GC/MS results for the core samples from the untreated amber objects (table 7), the most striking feature is the remarkably broad range for the succinate content compared to the composition of the standards. In an overlay of FTIR spectra for some of these samples (figure 4), the main trend is the shift of the carbonyl peak to a lower wavenumber with increasing succinate content, which is characteristic of the conversion of esters to carboxylic acids. These results provide evidence that partial hydrolysis of the succinate esters in the objects has occurred, which is a reaction that would enrich the residual amber in succinic acid. Figure 5 THM-Py-GC/MS results for dark surface and inner core of amber from Verfmolen ‘De Kat.’ Figure 4 Variation in FTIR spectrum with succinate content for amber objects (core samples). Figure 6 THM-Py-GC/MS results for surface and inner core samples from 83.AO.202.1 (cat. no. 12). One concern in this study was that the composition of the surface crusts of the amber objects might be considerably different from that of the inner cores, due to hydrolysis, Analysis of Selected Ambers 275