Compare methods

	Single-Aliquot Regenerative-Dose (SAR) Protocol	Bayesian Chronological Modeling
Field	Archaeology	Archaeology
Family	Process / pipeline	Regression model
Year of origin	2000	2009
Originator	Andrew Murray and Ann Wintle	Christopher Bronk Ramsey (OxCal); Caitlin Buck and colleagues (Bayesian framework)
Type	Measurement protocol for estimating the equivalent dose in optically stimulated luminescence dating	Bayesian statistical model combining dates with prior archaeological information
Seminal source	Murray, A. S., & Wintle, A. G. (2000). Luminescence Dating of Quartz Using an Improved Single-Aliquot Regenerative-Dose Protocol. Radiation Measurements, 32(1), 57-73.	Bronk Ramsey, C. (2009). Bayesian Analysis of Radiocarbon Dates. Radiocarbon, 51(1), 337-360.
Aliases	SAR Protocol, Single-Aliquot Regenerative-Dose OSL, SAR Equivalent-Dose Estimation, Quartz SAR Luminescence	Bayesian Radiocarbon Modeling, OxCal Bayesian Chronology, Bayesian Phase Modeling, Chronological Bayesian Modeling
Related	3	3
Summary	The single-aliquot regenerative-dose (SAR) protocol is the measurement methodology that underlies modern optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating, providing the recipe by which the equivalent dose of a sediment sample is estimated from a single sub-sample. Its central problem is that exposing a mineral grain to light and radiation in the laboratory changes how brightly it luminesces, so a naive comparison of natural and laboratory signals is biased. Murray and Wintle's protocol solves this by measuring, after every luminescence readout, the response to a fixed small 'test dose' and using it to normalize for sensitivity change, so that natural and regenerated signals can be compared on a common footing. The aliquot's natural signal is then interpolated onto a regeneration growth curve to read off the equivalent dose, and a suite of internal checks — recycling, recuperation, and dose recovery — verifies that the procedure behaved correctly. Because the entire measurement is done on one aliquot, the protocol is efficient, reproducible, and the de facto standard for quartz OSL.	Bayesian chronological modeling refines archaeological chronologies by combining the calibrated probability distributions of individual radiocarbon dates with prior archaeological knowledge — most importantly the stratigraphic order of samples and their grouping into phases — within a single Bayesian model. Rather than treating each date in isolation, the method asks what calendar ages are jointly consistent with all the dates and all the ordering constraints at once, and returns sharpened posterior distributions for each date plus estimates of the start, end, and duration of phases and the timing of events. Formalized by Caitlin Buck and colleagues and made widely usable through Christopher Bronk Ramsey's OxCal software, with the international IntCal calibration curve as input, it has become the standard framework for high-precision archaeological dating.