Via Cozzi, 53 – 20125 Milano – Italy

E-mail address: M.martini@unimib.it

In the field of Archaeological Science, Thermoluminescence (TL) is being applied since 1970 and its validity and reliability has been widely demonstrated. The various TL techniques are specifically applied to ceramic material and even to other materials containing quartz or feldspar minerals and that have been submitted to heating to a temperature up to some hundreds degree centigrade.

In principle, many historical and archaeological materials and artifacts can be dated: potteries and bricks, but also porcelain, furnaces, hearths, clay cores. In normal conditions, accuracies as good as 5-10% of the age can be obtained in the range between 50 and 60,000 years.

High precision has been reached when applying this technique to building dating. In these cases a real “stratigraphy” can be obtained, giving as a result the various phases of building, reconstruction and restoration.

Recently the reasearch moved also toward the study of the so called Optically Stimulated Luminescence (OSL), which uses visible or infrared light, instead of heat, to empy the electronic traps, filled by environmental irradiation. OSL dating is giving results more and more interesting, even if the understanding of the basical physics mechanisms is still under study.

The basis of TL and OSL will be presented, together with their applications and some examples of dating in the field of Archaeology and the History of Art.