New developments in the scientific dating of brick.

Fired clay brick has been widely used in the construction of buildings in many parts of Europe since its introduction by the Romans, and the extremely robust physical properties of fired clay enable bricks to endure within the archaeological record for many centuries, notably as structural elements in standing buildings. Most ancient standing buildings, erected wholly or partially in brick, have undergone alterations since their original construction and consequently usually have a complex history. The current approaches to unravelling building histories have the capability to date the original construction and subsequent alterations to within several years or better where structural analysis combined with searches for documentary evidence and tree-ring dating of timbers is employed. However, for many vernacular buildings, difficulties in dating may arise where documentary evidence has not survived, or may have never existed, where tree-ring dates are not available (such as the replacement of original structural timbers, insufficient number of rings, etc.), and where there is an absence of diagnostic architectural features. In these circumstances the margin of uncertainty in dating may increase by at least several decades, depending on the nature of the available building evidence. This paper discusses the potential of a scientific dating method, luminescence dating, that provides a means of determining the date of manufacture of fired clay brick. Although the luminescence method has become well established in the field of archaeology, it has had limited application to building history. This paper provides a brief introduction to the application of the method and its potential for further development in historic buildings analysis, drawing upon the results of a recent test programme of dating brick from late-medieval and post-medieval English buildings

The Durham TL ceramic dating service

A TL dating service for archaeologists has been established at our laboratory and its viability is being investigated as part of a research project. The service has been structured to cater for the needs of British archaeologists, although we consider that the fundamental approach would be appropriate to most TL dating requirements. Two levels of accuracy are offered in survey dating and dating programmes as part of a two tiered system. In its first year of operation the laboratory has tested over 80 samples and in this paper we discuss the structure of the service and the dates produced

Luminescence dating of sediments from a Palaeolithic site associated with a solution feature on the North Downs of Kent, UK

Optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating has been applied to determine the burial age of sediment horizons within a sequence containing Lower Palaeolithic artefacts on an upland site associated with a solution feature (doline) at West Cliffe, located on the North Downs in Kent, UK. The study makes use of a novel extension of the single aliquot OSL measurement procedure to investigate the nature of significant overdispersion in equivalent dose values with very small aliquots of quartz inclusions, enabling single grain resolution to be approached with ~90 m diameter quartz extracted from the relatively fine-grained brickearth. A detailed examination of the uniformity of the distribution of radionuclide sources in the sampled volumes was also performed and this included the application of a spatially-resolved technique for beta dose rate measurement. The OSL ages, obtained for the burial of brickearth positioned stratigraphically below and above a clay and flint clast layer containing the artefacts and debitage, place the deposition of the artefacts to between ca 140 and 80 ka ago. This is significantly later than indicated by the artefact typology (>300 ka) and contrary to the expectation of in situ burial indicated by earlier research in this region. If displacement occurred on other upland sites this finding has important implications for establishing the timing of hominin use of the upland areas which, beyond broad attribution to Lower or Middle Palaeolithic origin, is uncertain and similar doubts apply to the interpretation of the environments that prevailed