Thermoluminescence (TL), Optically Stimulated Luminescence (OSL) and Electron Spin Resonance (ESR) dating, collectively known as Luminescence dating has emerged as a technique by itself to directly determine the age not only of ancient pottery, bricks and terracotta but also the burial age of the main mineral constituents in unheated Quaternary Sediments. Luminescence dating has a proud history of association with archaeology, beginning almost more than half a century ago. Even since the pioneering work of Farrington Daniels (University of Wisconsin, USA) who in early 1950 suggested the possibility of using TL to date geological and archaeological age.
Fluvial deposits and landforms are important archives of river response to climate, tectonics and base level change and are commonly associated with archaeological sites. Unlike radiocarbon dating, the target material for luminescence dating (sands and silts) is nearly ubiquitous in fluvial deposits and the age range for luminescence spans the last glacial – interglacial cycle, a time period of interest to many Quaternary scientists. Recent advances in luminescence dating techniques and the development of single-grain (in the case of OSL) dating capabilities have now allowed fluvial deposits, and other deposits commonly afflicted with incomplete zeroing of the luminescence signal, to be dated. The application of luminescence dating to fluvial deposits is discussed with respect to its potential to provide important contributions to research in the fields of geomorphology, palaeo-seismology and archaeology.
It is very important to date the formation ages of terraces, because a terrace surface is a good datum of cart for evaluation of fault activity and uplift-subsidence. Fluvial sequences (terrace stair cases) represent archives of Quaternary paleoclimatic fluctuation and can serve as stratigraphical frameworks for geochronology and for correlation with other depositional environments. The need of a new method for terrace dating, as dating data of terraces whose ages are estimated to be 104-106 years are lacking also, have been solved by the introduction of a new dating method like TL, OSL and ESR dating. These new methods are advantageous as a lot of quartz grains are contained in sediments.
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