Different approaches to date bricks from historical buildings

The application of Thermally (TL) and Optically (OSL) Stimulated Luminescence on bricks used as building material has allowed solving an chronological issue in the field of historical building dating. The possibility to use one or more methodologies of dating is closely related to the luminescent and granulometric characteristics of the sample. Using some brick samples collected in the church of Sain Seurin in Bordeaux (France), this paper discusses the implications and the possibility to use different approaches and techniques for dating. With this aim luminescence measurements were performed on both polymineral fine grain and quartz inclusion phases extracted from each brick. For Equivalent Dose (ED) and consequently age determination, TL on mixed fine grain fraction (FG), OSL on quartz inclusions (QI) and on mixed fine grain (FG*) fraction, were used. The results obtained suggest the advantage of using OSL technique on fine grain fraction cleaned up by IR stimulation (FG*), but the use of quartz inclusion represents indeed a good alternative.