Proposals

Abstract

The Luminescence Dating Laboratory provides a variety of teaching and research opportunities to undergraduate and graduate students in the Department of Anthropology, as well as serving students and researchers from the Department of Earth and Space Sciences. These opportunities span a wide range of archaeological and geological subjects pertaining to geochronology, such as determining the ages of prehistorical pottery and ceramics, configuring archaeological site settlement chronologies through sediment dating, and determining glacial histories and river transport timelines with luminescence exposure dating. Luminescence surface exposure dating especially has been a recently fruitful area of study, with many national meetings in both archaeological and geological subjects holding sections solely devoted to discussing the technique and its recent publications and advances. As such, the UW Luminescence Lab, with the collaboration of undergraduate workers, is currently conducting various exposure dating related studies on samples sent from researchers in New England and abroad, in addition to local graduate student work from the Department of Earth and Space Sciences concerning applications of luminescence surface exposure aging. Such work requires the use of a high precision rock saw, of which the blades are currently worn out. Further, there is enhanced interest from the Department of Earth and Space sciences to use our saw for thin sectioning purposes. In order to accomplish these and future projects, new diamond blades are needed to replace our now worn out blades.