S-IRLum · Spatially resolved luminescence to date human prehistory in Early and Middle Pleistocene Spain

The Iberian peninsula contains many sites essential to the current understanding of human evolution and population movement, including some of the oldest evidence of hominin occupation in Europe at over a million years ago. However, many of these late Early and Middle Pleistocene sites are challenging to date due to their old age and the scarcity of applicable methods. The main aim of this project is to develop luminescence-based dating tools targeted to such sites, thereby addressing this chronological gap. The S-IRLum project consists of a combination of method development on two complementary luminescence-based dating techniques―infra-red radiofluorescence (IR-RF) and infra-red photoluminescence (IRPL)―at single-grain resolution and their application to three important sites of Early and Middle Pleistocene age in Northern and Southern Spain. Development of an automated spatially resolved analysis through an ultra low-light imaging detection system is the only possibility to isolate grains with appropriate characteristics and avoid contamination by unwanted signal from other minerals. By analysing individual sediment grains, such methods will also be sensitive to natural sediment re-working events, a common occurrence in cave environments, thus increasing the accuracy of resulting ages. The research output will provide (i) an efficient and reproducible analysis pipeline for spatially-resolved luminescence dating and (ii) robust multi-method chronostratigraphies for the three dated sites, providing further insight into the timing of hominin arrival in Spain and the technological developments of these populations, such as the use of fire.