A NEW THERMOLUMINESCENCE DATING TECHNIQUE FOR HEATED FLINT

A new thermoluminescence (TL) technique for determining the age of heated flint artefacts from archaeological sites is presented. It is a variant of the SAR protocol, which is usually used for OSL dating of sediment, but it is not based on a presumed model for fitting the dose-response curve. Dose recovery tests as well as comparisons with standard protocols show the accuracy of the new technique. It is found that the sensitivity of the thermolu- minescence (TL) signal of flint in the orange-red waveband does not show severe changes due to the heating process while measuring the TL. This allows the application of a short SAR procedure, which requires only two dose points. The technique does not require as much instrument time as other SAR techniques, and thus is advantageous for dating very old samples. The major advantage of this new technique is the small amount of sample material required, which allows the dating of samples that are too small for standard TL dating techniques.

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