One is the development of rapid OSL profiling methods, originally using series of small samples analysed in the laboratory to map sedimentary stratigraphy, and more recently with the development, at SUERC, of field portable instrumentation which can be used to detect inversions, age-discontinuities, and redepositional sequences during excavation and sampling.The other is the development of small-aliquot and single-grain OSL methods which can generate dose-distributional information using automated equipment in the laboratory, and thus provide a means of monitoring and accounting for mixed-age and partially zeroed materials within sediment samples.
This has been applied to prehistoric settlements in Orkney, where there is evidence of abandonment of marginal settlements at times of environmental stress, and to Iron Age hut circles in the Scottish Borders, where abandonment coincides with the Roman occupation of the region.
But these approaches may hold new opportunities for dating lithic monuments such as standing stones, chambered tombs or other built monuments which can currently only be placed into their cultural and chronological contexts using indirect means.
They may also provide a means of enhancing understanding of the duration of use of portable stone objects (including handaxes) prior to deposition within archaeological sites and landscapes.
This has external links to the North Atlantic climate system, and also to the development of greater understanding of the environmental factors which accompany changes in settlement pattern, and population movements.
Within sites the recognition that some constructional activities can also reset the luminescence age system for underlying sedimentary substrates has profound implications for dating incised features and certain built structures.