The State-of-the-Art of Dating Techniques Applied to Ancient Mortars and Binders: A Review

Abstract

The most recent workshop on mortar dating (25–27 Oct. 2018, Bordeaux, Montaigne University, France), which closely followed the publication of an extensive round robin-exercise involving several laboratories, was an opportunity to review the history and challenges of mortar dating methods and procedures currently in use. This review stems from the keynote lectures presented at the meeting, and wishes to summarize recent results, present trends, and future challenges. Three major areas are brought into focus (1) radiocarbon (14C) dating of complex mortars: can we assess the chances of successful dating?, (2) 14C dating of archaeological carbonate materials: difficulties, new directions and applications, and (3) single grain optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating of mortars in architectural archaeology: the current state of the art. This paper reflects the material presented by the authors and discussed at the workshop.

Radiocarbon Dating of St. George’s Rotunda in Nitrianska Blatnica (Slovakia): International Consortium Results

“…Although the 14 C dating of mortar samples is still a challenging method, recently new developments have been reported (e.g., Hajdas et al 2020;Urbanová et al 2020), which will further improve dating of mortars. The dating results of mortar samples reported in this work confirmed usefulness of the method, especially if the mortar data could be supported by wood and/or charcoal data.…”

Modeling Light Exposure of Quartz Grains During Mortar Making: Consequences for Optically Stimulated Luminescence Dating

“…The potential of the SG-OSL dating method has already been demonstrated and published (see Urbanová et al 2020 in this issue). So, instead of presenting only successful results, in the following section, we first discuss cases of failure in mortar dating by OSL, and secondly, Figure 3 Research of the optimal couple of parameters kappa-sigma.…”

Mortars, plasters and pigments—research questions and sampling criteria

“…Sampling and analytical problems are well known to date (Boaretto and Poduska 2013;Ringbom et al 2014;Toffolo et al 2020;Urbanová et al 2020) and partially obviated through the preliminary analysis of the samples. On the other hand, the development of accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) has made it possible to step forward further, thanks to reducing the sample required for the analysis (less than 1 mg).…”