Single-Grain Quartz OSL Characteristics: Testing for Correlations within and between Sites in Asia, Europe and Africa
1
Department of Archaeology, School of History and Culture, Sichuan University, Chengdu 610207, China
2
Centre for Archaeological Science, School of Earth and Environmental Science, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, NSW 2522, Australia
3
Australian Research Council (ARC) Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, NSW 2522, Australia
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Methods Protoc. 2020, 3(1), 2; https://doi.org/10.3390/mps3010002
Received: 11 September 2019 / Revised: 12 December 2019 / Accepted: 16 December 2019 / Published: 26 December 2019
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Methods in Dating and Other Applications using Luminescence)
We studied the characteristics of the optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) signal of single-grain quartz from three sites in China, Italy, and Libya, including the brightness, decay curve and dose response curve (DRC) shapes, recuperation, and reproducibility. We demonstrate the large variation in OSL behaviors for individual quartz grains of different samples from different regions, and show that recuperation, sensitivity change, and reproducibility are independent of the brightness and decay curve shape of the OSL signals. The single-grain DRCs can be divided into at least eight groups with different characteristic saturation doses (D0), and a standardized growth curve (SGC) can be established for each of the DRC groups. There is no distinctive difference in the shape of OSL decay curves among different DRC groups, but samples from different regions have a difference in the OSL sensitivities and decay shapes for different groups. Many of the quartz grains have low D0 values (30–50 Gy), and more than 99% of the grains have D0 values of <200 Gy. Our results raise caution against the dating of samples with equivalent dose values higher than 100 Gy, if there are many low-D0 and ‘saturated’ grains.
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Keywords:
OSL; quartz; standardized growth curves; decay curve; saturation dose
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MDPI and ACS Style
Hu, Y.; Li, B.; Jacobs, Z. Single-Grain Quartz OSL Characteristics: Testing for Correlations within and between Sites in Asia, Europe and Africa. Methods Protoc. 2020, 3, 2. https://doi.org/10.3390/mps3010002
AMA Style
Hu Y, Li B, Jacobs Z. Single-Grain Quartz OSL Characteristics: Testing for Correlations within and between Sites in Asia, Europe and Africa. Methods and Protocols. 2020; 3(1):2. https://doi.org/10.3390/mps3010002
Chicago/Turabian StyleHu, Yue; Li, Bo; Jacobs, Zenobia. 2020. "Single-Grain Quartz OSL Characteristics: Testing for Correlations within and between Sites in Asia, Europe and Africa" Methods Protoc. 3, no. 1: 2. https://doi.org/10.3390/mps3010002
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