Luminescence dating of samples from recent contexts in South Africa.

The last 500 years was a formative period of the southern African past, during which hunter-gatherers, agropastoralists and colonists interacted frequently and intensely on the shared landscape. The archaeological and historical data from this era interleave; fitting the material remains into the oral record requires the chronological sequence of archaeological site settlement, use and abandonment to be sound and resolved ideally to a generational scale. Because of acute De Vries effects, radiocarbon dating is inadequate over the last 500 years. Using optically stimulated luminescence measurements on single coarse grains of quartz from midden sediments and thermoluminescence measurements on fine-grained quartz extracted from smelting remains, chronometric ages with good resolution have been obtained for important Late Iron Age sites in South Africa: Smelterskop, a tin production center, and Dithakong, a frontier settlement. Calculating luminescence ages for young samples requires employing statistical models that account for short burial time. Refined chronologies for the colonial era will enable Africanist archaeologists to explore the nature of relationships between communities and better understand the shifting political and economic landscape of the time.