Luminescence Dating at Alice Boer site, Brazil

Summary

The Alice Boer site, in the Rio Claro region of São Paulo state, Brazil, gained some renown in the 1970s as a possible pre-Clovis site. It was excavated in the 1960s by Maria Beltrão and produced a questionable radiocarbon date of 14.2 ± 1.2 BP (uncalibrated) drawn from a very small (for conventional dating) charcoal piece near the bottom of an ant-disturbed cultural layer. A TL date on burned chert of 11 kya was also produced. The presence of artifacts in the lower layers and the integrity of the site have been disputed. The University of São Paulo has recently re-investigated the site, because it may represent an early incursion of a bifacial industry into Brazil. This presentation discusses the results of single-grain OSL dating of seven samples, which range in age from 5 to 30 ka, and the relationship of the ages to cultural material. Additional OSL dates from the Rio Claro drainage are also presented to put the dates in geological context.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• Recent Applications of Luminescence Dating in Archaeology

Keywords

Spatial Coverage