Luminescence dating of archaeometallurgical slag: use of the SAR technique for determination of the burial dose

Abstract

The potential of using luminescence techniques to date metallurgical slag of archaeological origin has been investigated. Slag is an important residue from the metal smelting process and there is no technique currently available to directly date it. An attempt has been made to apply an optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) single-aliquot technique using quartz extracted from the slag matrix. A single-aliquot regeneration technique was used and preliminary results are encouraging in spite of problems encountered in the determination of the equivalent dose ( D e) and apparent underestimation of the preliminary dates obtained. The results presented here were obtained from measurements on copper and iron slag from archaeological sites in Britain and Greece.