Luminescence and compositional studies for the identification of

Abstract

Modern mining activities often leads to destruction of archaeological records, making difficult to date the contexts and tools. In this work, a prehistoric mine with "fire-setting" techniques evidence was used to demonstrate the relevance of luminescence protocols to identify and date ancient mining activities. Chemical and mineralogical studies complemented the dosimetric ones by means of luminescence protocols. One of the samples shows lower absorbed dose suggesting heating procedures, like "fire-setting" and its luminescence age, determined by SAROSL, points to copper exploitation during the Middle/Late Bronze Age at La Turquesa mine, in accordance with archaeological records.