The University of Science and Technology of China has made the latest progress in the study of the luminescence dating technology of heated archaeological materials

Source: HKUST News Network

Beicun Site is an early settlement site of Liangzhu culture excavated by Zhejiang Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology in 2020-2021. So far, important jade and stone tools such as Longhead bracelets, jade huang, jade cicada and stone yue have been found, providing the latest data for studying the development of Liangzhu society, class differentiation and exploring the background of the rise of Liangzhu Ancient City. In order to determine the absolute age of the Beicun site and explore the relationship between the sites outside Liangzhu Ancient City, the Laboratory of Science and Technology Archaeology of the University of Science and Technology of China and the Zhejiang Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology have carried out a systematic chronological analysis of the pottery, terra-cored soil and carbonized plant remains in the Beicun site. The relevant results are summarized in Quartz OSL and TL dating of pottery, burnt clay, and sediment from Beicun archaeological site, China was recently published in Quaternary Geochronology, an international professional journal of chronology.

Since Oxford University used the thermoluminescence method in pottery in the 1950s and 1960s, the application of the technique in the field of archaeology has developed rapidly. The luminescence techniques such as single piece regeneration and single particle have been used to date pottery, porcelain, stone tools (heated flint), burnt earth, furnace, brick, slag and other archaeological materials, but the luminescence properties of minerals in heated archaeological materials have not been systematically studied. This study is the first to find and confirm the correlation between the special signal of medium component of quartz in heated archaeological materials and the heating history of 600-800℃. Using OSL-SAR and TL-SAR methods, an independent luminescence dating program was designed for the Beicun site. Based on the statistical model of R language, the luminescence ages of pottery chips and terra-cored soil were calculated. The results were consistent with the carbon 14 ages of the microchar fragments isolated from the terra-cored soil. The results show that under the conditions of standardized sampling and targeted testing, the application of luminescence dating technology has the advantage of high accuracy in the chronology research of buried pottery and burned earth archaeological heating materials, and is expected to determine the precise age of the last archaeological heating event (such as sacrifice, incineration, cooking, etc.).

The main experiment of this study was completed in the Science and Technology Archaeology Laboratory of the University of Science and Technology of China. The luminescent laboratory is equipped with four optical and thermoluminescent measurement systems (Riso DA-20 in Denmark and Freiberg lexsyg Smart in Germany), which can be used for luminescent dating of a wide range of archaeological heated materials and strata sediments.

The first author of this study is Wang Chunxin, PhD candidate, Department of Science and Technology History and Archaeology, University of Science and Technology of China, corresponding author is Associate Professor Fan Anchuan, Department of Science and Technology History and Science and Technology Archaeology, University of Science and Technology of China. Wang Ningyuan Research librarian, Chen Minghui librarian, Ji Xiang librarian, Zhejiang Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, and Professor Kim Junyao, Wu Youjin Special Associate Researcher and Master student Zhang Yunyi from the Department of Science and Technology History and Archaeology of the University of Science and Technology of China are co-authors of the paper. This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41303080), the Youth Innovation Promotion Association of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (2018499), the Double Major Construction Research Fund of the University of Science and Technology of China (YD2110002027), and the Academic Leading Talents Training Program of the University of Science and Technology of China (2018).

The thesis links: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quageo.2022.101281

(Department of History and Archaeology of Science and Technology, School of Humanities and Social Sciences)