High-resolution chronologies for loess: comparing AMS 14C and optical dating results

Abstract

The Nußloch loess section in South West Germany is famous in Central Europe for its thick deposits from the Last Glacial Maximum. It has therefore been intensively studied during the past few years and offers an excellent opportunity to compare the performance of different dating techniques covering the period 15–45 ka. Here we present results from optical and AMS 14C dating. The silt-sized polymineral fraction of the clastic sediments and a multiple-aliquot approach was used for IR-OSL dating. 14C dating was carried out on organic macro-remnants and humin fractions extracted from the sediments. With the exception of samples taken from the uppermost 1.5 m of the section, IR-OSL and calibrated 14C-AMS ages are consistent over the entire period. The inconsistencies in the upper meters are thought to be due to disturbances during soil formation in the Holocene. The good agreement obtained on the remaining sequence demonstrates the high accuracy of both methods when studying loess sections: for the IR-OSL ages no significant age underestimations are obvious. The results clearly document that accurate chronologies can be developed for such continental sedimentary sequences. This gives access to archives that can now be studied with a high temporal resolution and allows the establishment of new paleoclimatic proxies for the study of terrestrial responses to past climatic changes.