Laser Ablation Cleaning Effects on Thermoluminescence Dating Technique

Abstract

In this work we present a study of laser ablation (LA) restoration techniques and of thermoluminescence dating process (TL). The main aim of the work is to demonstrate that LA don’t affect the possibility to date ceramic artifacts after restoration. We ablate Neolithic ceramics in air with a first harmonic of laser YAG (1064 nm) and dating the artifacts before and after the cleanness process. We obtain a discrepancy of 200 years (3300 B.C. and 3100 B.C. before and after cleanness respectively), value which is in below limits of experimental error. Moreover, we monitor the temperature of artifacts during the LA at the point of sampling for dating. We observe that the maximum temperature reached is about 100?C, not enough to empty the metastable traps that cause the luminescence signal.