Luminescence Dating

doi:10.1017/9781139013826.019

19 - Luminescence Dating

from Part VI - Absolute Dating Methods

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 December 2019

Richard M. Bailey

Edited by

Michael P. Richards and

Kate Britton

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Michael P. Richards: Affiliation:
Simon Fraser University, British Columbia
Kate Britton: Affiliation:
University of Aberdeen

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Summary

The range of chronological methods described by the term “luminescence dating” provides a rich set of tools for dating many types of events relevant to archaeological research. These include assessing the depositional age of sediments (the time elapsed since those sediment were deposited by, for example, water, wind, or human activity), and estimating the time since pottery, casting cores, or stones were last fired/heated. Following an initial suggestion by Daniels et al. (1953), luminescence dating methods were introduced into the archaeological context by Aitken et al. (1964) with the thermoluminescence (TL) dating of pottery. Since then, considerable improvements in understanding the basic underlying physical mechanisms have been translated into significant methodological breakthroughs. Notable among these was the development of optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) methods (Huntley et al. 1985) and the improved confidence in dating sedimentary material that this brought. A more recent technologically driven advance was the dating of individual sand grains (so-called single-grain dating), allowing more in-depth assessments of dating reliability and widening the applicability of OSL dating (also referred to as “optical dating”).

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Type: Chapter
Information: Archaeological Science
An Introduction
, pp. 424 - 438
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781139013826.019 [Opens in a new window]
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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