J Archaeol Sci 31 (7)

Discusses the Quartz Hydration Dating (QHD) technique developed for dating archaeological quartz artifacts and naturally fractured quartz fragments, which relies on the phenomenon of water diffusion into quartz leading to the formation of a hydration layer that can be measured by a hydrogen profiling technique, and diffusivity data connecting the layer thickness with the hydration time. The main factors influencing the diffusivity are temperature, the crystallographic orientation, measured as the angle between surface of hydration and crystal c-axis, and initial H content of the quartz. The experimental results are discussed in the frame of a diffusion-reaction model from the literature. The authors give the time range of QHD as 100 ya to over 100K ya, and the error of age determination as 35%, reduced to 20% by controlling for material variability. They state that QHD is applicable to single-crystal specimens and aggregates of single crystals, and that apart from its application to archaeology and geology, the technique is suited for detecting fakes.