The scientific study of Neolithic monuments holds fundamental keys to the analysis of early social complexity. This is often impeded by the challenges involved in understanding their temporality and, particularly, their initial construction dates. This problem is most severe in monuments that were not predominantly used for burial and went on to have long biographies in which activity in later periods obliterated the material record of the earliest phases. That was certainly the case of the Menga dolmen, part of the Antequera World Heritage site (Málaga, Spain), and one of the most remarkable megaliths in Europe, for which, after nearly 200 years of explorations and research, no firm chronology existed. The research presented in this paper shows how this problem was tackled through a multimethod, scientific, and geoarchaeological approach. The analysis of 29 fresh numerical ages, including radiocarbon determinations as well as optically stimulated luminescence, thermoluminescence, and uranium-thorium dates, led to the successful establishment of Menga's construction date and the subsequent contextualization of the monument within the social and cultural background it arose in. Placing the dolmen in the context of its time of “birth” introduces entirely new possibilities for its interpretation, both in terms of local and supralocal social and cultural processes.

This paper reports a comprehensive study of single-phase polycrystalline chromium-doped zinc gallogermanate (ZGGO:Cr) synthesised by a high-temperature solid-state reaction, employing photoluminescence (PL), persistent luminescence (PersL) and thermoluminescence (TL) measurements. A bandgap energy of ∼4.77 eV (260 nm) was estimated by optical reflectance. The ZGGO:Cr luminescence was dominated by a red/near-infrared emission due to Cr³⁺ optical centres, which displayed well-resolved R1, R2, N1 and N2 lines, and a broad vibronic progression. PL excitation (PLE) data revealed that those centres were preferentially populated via intraionic absorption, being also excited via band-to-band absorption and by a defect excitation band at ∼0.9 eV below the conduction band, whose origin remains unknown. PersL of more than 10 h was identified and attributed to the N2 Cr³⁺-related defect. The TL results suggest a continuous distribution of electronic states with activation energies ranging from about 0.7 eV to 1.2 eV. An effective density of states was obtained for different delay times between irradiation and heating, revealing a rapid depopulation for activation energies below ∼1 eV. In short, this research contributes to a better understanding of traps in ZGGO:Cr and highlights the potential of the Cr³⁺-related emission in this material for dosimetric purposes, paving the way for developing novel ZGGO:Cr-based devices.