Getting the right age? Testing luminescence dating of both quartz and feldspars against independent age controls

Abstract

When luminescence dating was being developed much scientific effort was invested in showing it could achieve the correct ages, but this is now not routinely carried out for established protocols. This paper focussed on known age deposits from two case studies to explore whether correct ages were achieved. Case study 1 used the Storegga tsunami deposit dated to 8.2 ka sampled both horizontally and vertically and measured with OSL, IRSL and pIRIR. All results, for both quartz and feldspars, returned the correct age for the horizontal sample. Results from the vertical sample were more problematic with issues attributed to ongoing feldspar contamination of quartz and to beta heterogeneity. To agree with the independent age control single aliquot results required combination of >400 palaeodose replicates and in the case of IRSL the use of minimum age models. Measurements of feldspars at the single grain level using pIRIR measurements showed much improvement. Case study 2 used a barchan dune on the Tibet Plateau, China known to have been in position ∼10 years. Both quartz and feldspars returned young ages close to the true age, but the feldspar ages with brighter luminescence signal were more accurate once the luminescence signal to background ratio was optimised. On the basis of this study we advise against sampling vertically. We also recommend measuring feldspars with single grain pIRIR where possible, measuring >150 palaeodose replicates per sample and choosing feldspars rather than quartz for very young samples.