Dating surface assemblages using pottery and eggshell: assessing radiocarbon and luminescence techniques in Northeast Asia

The vast majority of known archaeological sites in arid Northeast Asia are surface assemblages containing few or no organic remains. The lack of stratified sites and a relative absence of organic remains in surface assemblages hinders our ability to date sites, create local chronologies, and contextualize technological and socio-economic change. Such problems are common in arid regions around the world. New radiocarbon and luminescence dates on collections from the Gobi Desert of Mongolia and China are used here to assess the potential for direct dating of commonly occurring artefacts like ostrich eggshell and pottery. Direct dating also allows for the identification and sorting of mixed-age assemblages. Here, we compare dates derived from Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) on ostrich eggshell, AMS on pottery, and luminescence on pottery. Our findings show that AMS and luminescence are highly complementary methods and produce results consistent with expected archaeological ages, while ostrich eggshell dates were older than the associated site assemblages.