Luminescence dating of archaeometallurgical slag: use of the SAR techniquefor determination of the burial dose

The potential of using luminescence techniques to date metallurgical slag o f archaeological origin has been investigated. Slag is an important residue from the metal smelting process and there is no technique currently availa ble to directly date it. An attempt has been made to apply an optically sti mulated luminescence (OSL) single-aliquot technique using quartz extracted from the slag matrix. A single-aliquot regeneration technique was used and preliminary results are encouraging in spite of problems encountered in the determination of the equivalent dose (D-e) and apparent underestimation of the preliminary dates obtained. The results presented here were obtained f rom measurements on copper and iron slag from archaeological sites in Brita in and Greece. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.