Investigations of the performance of quartz single aliquot DE determination procedures

Exploring the method of optical dating and comparison of optical and 14C ages of Late Weichselian coversands in the southern Netherlands

“…In the single-aliquot additive-dose approach (Murray et al, 1997) a single aliquot is put through a repeating cycle of irradiation, preheating and short OSL measurement, to construct the additive-dose growth curve. Stokes et al (2000) showed the limited applicability of this protocol for a variety of samples, and cautioned against the use of it without prior testing of the validity of the assumptions underlying the protocol. The first test suggested by Stokes et al (2000) deals with the constancy of the decay rate of the OSL signal as a result of the preheating and stimulation and was performed on samples OS-4, OS-D and OS-2.…”

“…Stokes et al (2000) showed the limited applicability of this protocol for a variety of samples, and cautioned against the use of it without prior testing of the validity of the assumptions underlying the protocol. The first test suggested by Stokes et al (2000) deals with the constancy of the decay rate of the OSL signal as a result of the preheating and stimulation and was performed on samples OS-4, OS-D and OS-2. For each sample, eight groups of three aliquots were subjected to 15 cycles of preheating and stimulation.…”

“…The second test suggested by Stokes et al (2000) concerns the effect on the sensitivity of the repeated preheating and measuring. Five aliquots of samples OS-4 and OS-D received the same treatment as above but between each preheat and OSL measurement a test dose of about 0.5 Gy was administered and the 110 C TL peak was recorded.…”

“…Although luminescence dating has developed into an important chronometric method that is becoming gradually more established, there are a multitude of techniques and measuring protocols that can be used, none of them yet proven to be universally applicable. As a consequence, and taking into account the variety of origins and depositional environments of sediments, it is worthwhile to investigate the applicability of a given technique for any new sediment that is dated by luminescence (Stokes et al, 2000;Lian and Huntley, 2001). These considerations are addressed in the present paper by presenting an evaluation of three different techniques for determining the palaeodose.…”

Optical Dating of Eolian Dune Sand from the Canadian Prairies*

“…As mentioned above, there are currently several procedures available: some are based on using the luminescence measured from many sample aliquots that have been given various laboratory γ or β doses, while others are based on measuring the luminescence from a single aliquot (or grain), that is repeatedly dosed, preheated (discussed below) and measured-the so-called "single-aliquot additive-dose" (SAAD) "single-aliquot regeneration additive-dose" (SARA) and "singlealiquot regenerative-dose" (SAR) methods. One of these methods is illustrated by Lian and Huntley (2001), while comprehensive discussions of others are given by Murray et al (1997), Aitken (1998), Galbraith et al (1999), Stokes et al (2000), Murray and Wintle (2000), Murray and Olley (2002), and Zhao et al (2003). The aforementioned studies were concerned only with quartz, but progress towards dating single aliquots of Kfeldspar sand has also been made (e.g., Wallinga et al, 2000), although there still remains the problem of anomalous fading.…”