The partial heat – longest plateau technique: Testing TL dating of Middle and Upper Quaternary volcanic eruptions in the Eifel Area, Germany

Abstract

Middle and Upper Quaternary volcanic events are often difficult to date, in particular when minerals suitable for 40Ar/39Ar-dating are missing. Here, we present first tests of a newly developed technique to use the thermoluminescence (TL) of maar tephra and crustal xenoliths for dating the eruption event. We take into consideration that resetting of the latent geological TL of country rock fragments during eruption may be incomplete. We therefore develop the “partial heat – longest plateau” (PHLP) technique to approach the inherited TL signal at eruption. This technique can overcome TL age overestimates due to incomplete zeroing, as is demonstrated for some eruptions in the Quaternary Eifel Volcanic Field, Germany, in the time range from 11 to 300 ka old. Although we avoid the often observed strong anomalous fading of volcanic feldspars and other volcanic minerals by using heated country rock xenoliths, we still face the problem of longer-term anomalous fading which may be responsible for apparent age underestimates. The orange-red TL emissions (RTL) of pure fine-grained quartz extracts from crustal xenoliths are also tested from two samples. This approach needs, however, further systematic investigations into the TL characteristics of RTL.