Luminescence dating (Other Keyword)
1-13 (13 Records)
Artifact assemblages from the Arizona Strip and adjacent area are characterized by widely distributed ceramics tempered with olivine, a volcanic mineral. Sources of olivine lie in the vicinity of Mt. Trumbull and Tuweep, near the northwestern part of the Grand Canyon. The olivine-tempered ceramics were distributed mostly westward from Mt. Trumbull, up to 100 km to the lowland Virgin area in southern Nevada between A.D. 200 and 1350. Ultimately, the goal of this study is to understand why ceramic...
Chronometry at Bear Creek, a ~12,000 Year-Old Site in Western Washington (2017)
Extant deposits at the Bear Creek site are highly compositionally variable, including fibrous peat, fluvial sands, volcanic tephra, and diatomaceous earth, reflecting a series of significant Holocene changes to the local environment. Multiple methods were used to directly date each of these sediments, including radiocarbon dating, single-grain IRSL dating of feldspar, OSL dating of fine-grained quartz, and tephra dating. Results from independent chronometric methods were then integrated with...
Contributions of IRSL to the Issue of Initial Settlement in the New World: The Case of the McDonald Creek Archaeological Site (2021)
This is an abstract from the "McDonald Creek and Blair Lakes: Late Pleistocene-Holocene Human Activity in the Tanana Flats of Central Alaska" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The McDonald Creek archaeological site from central Alaska (USA) has been dated using optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) in order to document the initial settlement in the New World. Eolian sediment samples (loess) from stratigraphic profiles have been systematically dated...
Doing it the old-fashioned way: Dating Paleoindian Rock Art in Eastern South America (2015)
Rock painting flourished in several parts of the world, including eastern South America. Traditions that can be important evidence not only of development of art, society, and religion but also of science and technology. Techniques for direct dating are in active development these days, but archaeological stratigraphy and radiometric dating can give an important baseline to compare with other methods. We present an example of this strategy and its results at Monte Alegre, Brazil and briefly...
Early Puebloan, Late Puebloan, or Paiute? Using Luminescence Dating to Address Issues with the Virgin Branch Ceramic Chronology (2016)
The Virgin Branch ceramic typology is poorly defined. Definitions and chronologies of most types were established more than half a century ago, when little work had been conducted in the region. Further, because of an absence of tree-ring dates, the placement of most types has relied on cross-dating with Kayenta pottery styles. These situations can create problems when using ceramics to date archaeological contexts, as illustrated by recent excavations at the Pete’s Pocket site. This site,...
Luminescence and radiocarbon dates from Plumbate production contexts (2016)
Plumbate, the most widely distributed pottery of Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, has been sourced to the Pacific coastal region of Soconusco, near the present international border between Mexico and Guatemala. In recent fieldwork, several Plumbate production contexts were excavated. In addition to large volumes of Plumbate and Plumbate wasters, these deposits contain large amounts of wood ash and solid ceramic cylinders of various sizes, from finger-size up to rolling-pin size. Complicating...
Luminescence Dates, Archaeological Survey, and Ancestral Overhill Cherokee Towns in Upper East Tennessee (2016)
We have conducted shoreline surveys of archaeological sites on major streams in upper East Tennessee for several years. In 2011, we added luminescence dating to this work. We discuss how luminescence dating has added robust chronological resolution to our work and how it has informed our hypothesis-building efforts. We address the protohistory of the region and the identification of early Cherokee towns here. Before adding luminescence dating as an integral facet of our work, we believed these...
Luminescence Dating at the Postclassic Site of Gonzálo Hernández, Chiapas, Mexico (2016)
In the Soconusco region of Chiapas, Mexico, we are still struggling with refining the Postclassic ceramic chronology. At the site of Gonzálo Hernández, the evidence suggests that the principal occupation of the site was during the Late Postclassic period (ca. 1300-1520CE), but a small percentage of sherds date to earlier periods. In an effort to approach the local ceramic chronology from a new perspective, a small sample of sherds were dated using luminescence dating. The results have clarified...
Luminescence dating of a Paleolithic site in the Aegean islands (2017)
Survey and ongoing excavations at the Stélida chert source and prehistoric stone tool quarry on the island of Naxos in the Aegean have yielded numerous lithic artifacts of Paleolithic and Mesolithic types. One implication is that the Greek islands may have been inhabited prior to the emergence of anatomically modern humans, a conclusion also drawn from a recently discovered site on Crete (Strasser et al JQS 2011). The Naxos site may be older, and its associated corpus of lithic material is...
Luminescence Dating of Prehistoric Ceramic Vessel Sherds From the North Central Hills of Mississippi (2016)
Data recovery investigations at site 22CH698, located in Choctaw County, Mississippi, employed luminescence dating of ceramic vessel sherds to complement radiocarbon dates and establish cultural stratigraphy within the site’s thick Holocene alluvium. The dating results, along with diagnostic artifacts, indicate that the site components, representing some 2,000 years of occupation, are mixed. Yet the luminescence dates underscore a strong Miller I through Miller III phase occupation (ca. 100 B.C....
Luminescence Dating of Surface Ceramics from Naturally Burned Archaeological Contexts (2015)
Luminescence dating of surface ceramics at archaeological sites is problematic for many reasons, including estimation of environmental dose rate, likelihood that an artifact is in situ and weathering. Until now, there has not been systematic research on the effect of natural fires on luminescence dating of pottery. This is an important consideration, because while the temperature of a typical fire is well above the threshold for resetting the luminescence signal in a sherd, the length of time...
Radiocarbon Dating Versus Luminescence Dating in the Pacific Northwest (2017)
In the Pacific Northwest of North America, the radiocarbon dating of charcoal has become the standard for assigning age to archaeological contexts. Other dating techniques are seldom used. Underused techniques like luminescence dating can apply when organic materials for radiocarbon dating are absent, unreliable or not associated with events of interest. In the Pacific Northwest, luminescence dating is beginning to be used for dating features containing fire-modified rock. By dating the last...
The re-evaluating diachronic trends of corrugated ware and rim eversion of jars in the Virgin Branch Ancestral Pueblo ceramics using optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating (2017)
Although the ceramic chronology in the Virgin Branch Ancestral Puebloan area requires more well-dated ceramic assemblage, there are some generally accepted diachronic trends based on surface treatment and form. Corrugated ware, for example, is believed to date around A.D. 1050. Rim eversion of jar is also often used as time indicator; sharply everted rim is considered to be associated to later time period, and little or no everted rim is associated to earlier time period. This information may be...