THERMOLUMINESCENCE DATING OF FLINT

Our ancestors have been making flint tools for over a million years. The tools or the flakes left by the flint-knappers have become important markers of prehistoric habitats. The imperishable and ubiquitous nature of flint explains why generations of prehistorians have used it to build a stone age chronology. To be dateable by TL flint must be heated to at least 450-degrees-C. While human use of fire may be as old as half a million years, the first true hearths appear late during the Lower Paleolithic period. At Terra-Amata, one of the oldest hearths discovered in France was dated to 230 +/- 40 ka BP by Wintle and Aitken (1977). By the dawn of the Middle Paleolithic fire must have become fully domesticated, judging by the accumulations of charred debris that henceforth litter human habitats. For example, at the Middle Paleolithic site of Kebara the profusion of hearths is vividly illustrated by numerous superposed white ash and black charcoal layers extending to a depth of 4 m (Meignen et al., 1989).