New approaches in OSL rock surface dating

Sedimentary rocks and the biological and cultural traces contained within them collectively form a planetary archive that records the geological history and the evolution of life on Earth. Today a wide range of geochronological techniques are available to numerically date these deposits, artefacts and events and to constrain the related earth surface and evolutionary processes. Geochronological dating tools and in particular luminescence-based dating techniques play a central role in unlocking the information of these archives and thus of our collective past, particularly if we consider the Quaternary period (the past 2.6 Ma), which is the time span of the evolution and rise of our species. In this project we will apply optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating to geological and archaeological rock surfaces. Our broad aims are to further develop and test OSL as a chronometer for rock surface dating and implement novel luminescence signals and detection systems (including an EM- CCD camera) into the OSL rock surface dating routine. As such this project will place OSL rock surface dating as an innovative numerical dating approach on firm grounds and will allow to better constrain the age of hitherto un-datable archaeological and geological rock surfaces. With a team of international collaborators a set of carefully chosen geomorphological and archaeological research questions and sites will be explored. Via OSL rock surface dating (i) the spatio- temporal evolution of fluvial armor and bedforms will be determined, (ii) the age of lithic surface scatter sites and stone monuments will be constrained and (iii) for the first time the applicability of rock surface dating to petroglyphs will be tested. As such if successful this project will make significant contributions to the fields of archaeology and fluvial geomorphology.