Luminescence dating of a Paleolithic site in the Aegean islands

Summary

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 vastly larger. Establishing a robust chronology for that material requires a carefully designed absolute dating program that integrates studies of stratigraphy, taphonomy, and lithic typology with context-appropriate deep-time radiometric methods. To this end we have started a program of luminescence dating of sediments from the quarry and surroundings using infrared stimulated luminescence (IRSL) of potassium feldspars. Some initial results are presented.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 15447