Investigating the applicability of a standardised growth curve approach on Middle Pleistocene sediments from northern Switzerland

The introduction of the Single Aliquot Regenerative Dose (SAR) protocol established luminescence dating as an indispensable tool in Quaternary research. A major impediment of this technique is the time required for measurements, since the protocol is repeated for various aliquots of each sample to establish a sound statistical basis. To reduce the demand on machine time, Standardised Growth Curve (SGC) approaches have been developed and successfully applied for samples from some regions. However, differences in luminescence properties require careful testing of this techniques when applied to samples with other geological background.In this study, the application of the SGC approach of Li et al. (2016) is successfully verified for multi-grain aliquots of coarse-grained quartz and feldspar samples from three sites in northern Switzerland. In-depth quality control measures ensure the reproducibility of equivalent dose (D_e) values obtained by the common SAR protocol and sample-specific SGCs. For both minerals little sensitivity was found to the re-normalisation dose and the sample-specific SGCs performed well. In contrast to other studies, no different types of dose response curve shape were observed for quartz. A minimum number of full SAR measurements of eight and six aliquots per sample has been found appropriate for quartz and feldspar, respectively. For the fading corrected feldspar signals, site-specific SGC worked well and D_e values of up to 800 Gy were consistently replicated.In summary, sample-specific SGCs for samples from northern Switzerland perform well and their application reduces measurement times by up to 70%. The construction of a regional SGC may well be beneficial, however, caution regarding the choice of given doses and curve fitting is recommended and a thorough verification of SGC results is needed before the technique is widely applied.