Complex Dose Rate Calculations in Luminescence Dating of Lacustrine and Palustrine Sediments from Niederweningen, Northern Switzerland

This study focusses on dose rate determination in complex settings in two drill cores from the site of Niederweningen,
northern Switzerland. A crosscheck with a certified standard material and neutron activation analyses (NAA)
reveals an overall good performance of high-resolution gamma spectrometry (HR-GS) when determining dose
rate-relevant elements. A second focus is on average water content during burial, by comparing measured sediment
moisture with water uptake capability. Furthermore, layer models are used to investigate the impact of inhomogeneous stratification on dose rate. Finally, different scenarios to correct for radioactive disequilibrium in the uranium
decay chain are investigated. While most of the applied corrections appear to have only a minor to moderate effect
on age calculation, the results for one core are contradictory. Possibly, some of the applied correction scenarios
are not reflecting the complex natural setting sufficiently, in particular average sediment moisture during burial
and the timing of radioactive disequilibrium might be incorrectly estimated. While deposition in one core can be
quite securely attributed to the period 100–70 ka, assigning the sediment sequence in the other core to the time
between ca. 130 ka and 90 ka remains to some extent insecure.