U-Th Burial Dating of Ostrich Eggshell from Blombos Cave

We propose to conduct coordinated U-Th dating of ostrich eggshell at this site to provide a detailed comparison between OSL and U-Th dates. Such a comparison will help to assess the accuracy of both techniques. A further benefit of the proposed research is that U-Th dating of ostrich eggshells provides ages with significantly smaller uncertainties than OSL ages, facilitating more precise comparison of the ages of archaeological milestones at Blombos with, for example, paleoclimate records and the archaeology at other sites.