Dating past earthquakes and related sediments by thermoluminescence methods: A review

Applications of luminescence dating of geological materials have undergone extensive development and refinement since 1986 when McCalpin first attempted to date faults using thermoluminescence (TL). Today, luminescence methods offer high potential for dating paleoearthquakes and coseismic and post-seismic deformation features over timescales ranging from 102 to 106 a. While luminescence approaches generally do not possess the precision obtained by, for example, 40Ar/39Ar and 14C methods, they offer a useful alternative approach with advantages in terms of age, range and scope of material. Although the application of luminescence dating has in some cases been successfully described, a comprehensive study outlining and defining protocols for routine luminescence methods to paleoseismology and neotectonic studies has not been forthcoming. This review surveys previous attempts to apply TL techniques to paleoseismology, and determination of the age of sediments associated with seismic events. However, while the use of TL has been a great success, the wide application of TL has been hampered by the problem of daylight signal resetting.