Optical dating of geoarchaeologically significant sites from the Southern High Plains and South Texas, USA

摘要

The Southern High Plains of the United States is a key region for the investigation of early human occupation of North America. This area, including selected archaeological sites located in southern Texas, contains a range of aeolian, fluvial and plays deposits. Such deposits may be suited to luminescence-based methods of age assessment. In this paper we describe a combination of multiple and single-aliquot optical dating results for a selection of sites with some independent age control. We find generally good agreement between multiple- and single-aliquot equivalent dose (D-e) estimates for the 20 samples compared, but note that the single-aliquot approach results in errors in mean D-e's to be less by an order of magnitude. Our results suggest that at least some of the single-aliquot methods are of great utility for low-latitude geoarchaeological sites. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. [References: 35]