Isothermal thermoluminescence dating of speleothem growth – A case study from Bleßberg cave 2, Germany

Abstract

Speleothems are a key archive of past climatic and environmental changes. ²³⁰Th/U dating is the most commonly used method to determine speleothem ages. However, incorporation of non-radiogenic thorium may hamper ²³⁰Th/U dating, and samples older than 600 ka also remain out-of-reach. Calcite exhibits a thermoluminescence (TL) signal at 280 °C with a high characteristic saturation dose, and provides significant potential to date carbonate samples over several million years. Hitherto, the application of TL dating for calcite has mainly been hindered by two factors: 1) a spurious TL signal occurring in the high temperature range, and 2) non-uniform dose rate due to U-series disequilibrium. Here we test an isothermal TL (ITL) dating method on a speleothem sample from Bleßberg cave 2, Germany. We show that the ITL signal measured at 240 °C can completely remove the 280 °C TL peak with a negligible TL contribution from the higher temperature range, thus reducing the influence from the spurious signal. The time-dependent dose rate variation can be simulated using the initial radioactivity of ²³⁸U, ²³⁴U, ²³⁰Th and their decay constants. We use the ²³⁰Th/U dating method to provide precise and accurate radiometric ages documenting that the speleothem grew between 425.5 ± 5.4 and 320.5 ± 9.7 ka. The ITL ages (421 ± 23 to 311 ± 23 ka) of four subsamples from the speleothem are consistent with the ²³⁰Th/U ages at isochronous sampling positions, showing the general reliability of the ITL dating method. ITL dating provides a pathway to construct chronologies for palaeoclimate reconstructions for speleothems beyond the range of the ²³⁰Th/U-method and for samples that are unsuitable for U-series dating methods.