| Abstract: | Luminescence analyses of several protohistoric brownware ceramics from the Great Basin have produced dates ranging from the 15th to 19th centuries. These begin to add detail to the chronology of these ceramics, which up until now has been poorly known despite their potential importance for understanding Numic population movement in the area. Use of the “slide method” for determining equivalent dose has circumvented problems due to nonlinearity in the relationship between dose and luminescence and has provided much higher precision than traditional methods of dating. Disequilibrium detected in the U-series radioisotope decay chain and some contribution to the dose from nuclear fallout products have created some uncertainty in the dose rate, but less than the overall analytical error. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. |
