LOESSFEST'09 | Aug. 31st – Sept. 3rd, 2009 |Novi Sad-Serbia
Luminescence Dating from the Krems-Wachtberg Site, Austria
Lomax, J.1, Fiebig, M.1, Preusser, F.2, Neugebauer-Maresch, C.3
1Institute of Applied Geology, University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences, Peter Jordan-Str. 70, 1190 Vienna, Austria
2Institut für Geologie, Universität Bern, Baltzerstrasse 1+3, 3012 Bern, Switzerland
3Prehistoric Commission of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, 1010 Vienna, Austria
Due to the discovery of a double-infant burial from the Upper Palaeolithic period, the loess section Krems-Wachtberg (Lower Austria) achieved international attention among archaeologists and Quaternary researchers. The children’s bodies were covered with red ochre and were decorated with ornaments, thus were probably ritually buried. The layer containing the grave is embedded in a more than 7 m thick loess sequence and was dated to 26,580 +/- 160 14C yr BP (Einwögerer et al. 2006) (ca. 31 ka corrected) , close to the onset of modern human occupation in central Europe. More than 33 samples were collected from this section and were dated by means of infrared stimulated luminescence (IRSL) and optically stimulated luminescence (OSL). The high sampling resolution of ~25 cm provide good internal control on the reliability of the IRSL and OSL-ages. The section above the archaeological layer gave IRSL/OSL dates in consistency with the radiocarbon ages and ranged from 31 ka to 22 ka.
Within this time span, short breaks in the loess sedimentation seem to be consistent with periods of sparse forest cover evident from pollen analysis of the Monticchio and Bouchet sites. A further age of ~ 12 ka indicates loess formation during the Younger Dryas. Loess deposition at the site commenced at least 40 ka ago, as is evident from the IRSL/OSL dates below the cultural layers. The chronostratigraphy of the Krems-Wachtberg will furthermore be compared to new IRSL/OSL dates from the Stillfried site 100 km to the east of the Wachtberg site.