A year after our last trip, the B1-geo-team from the RWTH Aachen spent another week in Serbia to continue their investigations at the archaeological site At. This time, geophysical methods were used, namely Electrical Resistivity Tomography (ERT) that give a good indication of the kind of sediments in the underground without drilling. The stratigraphy at the archaeological section At shows a complex and rapid changing environment. Therefore, the profiles are rather complicated for luminescence dating, since sediment layers are very thin. Usually, one needs to stay away from sedimentological borders to improve the validity of the datings. So, a new approach was chosen: The sediments around the archaeological layers were sampled in high resolution (2–5 cm) with the help of small film boxes and will be measured in the laboratory with a portable SUERC pulsed OSL device. This allows quick measurements of the luminescence intensity of a bulk sample, to understand complex processes in the sediment, e.g. soil mixing. We want to stress that the device solely cannot be used to obtain ages, but it helps to identify the most suitable sampling spots for full OSL dating in the profile.
Equipment for sampling, drawing and profile description at At1 trench 3B. Photo: Christian Zeeden |