New Quartz SAR-OSL Ages from the Stranded Beach Dune Sequence in South-east South Australia

A sequence of stranded coastal barriers in south-east South Australia preserves a record of sea-level variations over the past 800 ka. Huntley et al. (Quat. Sci. Rev. 12 (1993a) 1; Quat. Sci. Rev. 13 (1994a) 201) attempted to test thermoluminescence (TL) dating methods and found good agreement between quartz TL ages with independent ages for these dunes. We investigate the accuracy of the single-aliquot regenerative-dose (SAR) procedure (Radiat. Meas. 32 (2000) 57) over an extended age range of 0-250 ka, by comparing SAR-OSL ages determined on quartz extracts from these dunes with the existing chronology. We show that Robe II range is 60 ka, and that Robe III is 100 ka old. Not surprisingly, the OSL ages increase monotonically from the Robe II range to the West Naracoorte range. For the younger dunes (