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Luminescence techniques have only recently been applied to either pottery or sediments in South Africa and neighbouring countries. The first published thermoluminescence (TL) measurements in South Africa were made by Vogel(1) in 1985 on calcite from Taung and Swartkrans, in an attempt to develop a tool for dating hominid remains that were beyond the range of ionium dating. These measurements were made on the same it reader that is still used for the dating of quartz at the CSIR’s Quaternary Dating Unit (QUADRU). Since then, the same equipment has been used for the study of quartz and feldspars from sediments at a number of sites in South Africa and Namibia. More recently, a manual infrared stimulated luminescence (IRSL) reader has been obtained as well as a stimulation source that permits measurement of the optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) of quartz. This equipment improves measurement precision, particularly for young sediments. However, the throughput of samples achieved in other laboratories, whose results are discussed in this paper, will not be achieved unless a TL/OSL reader running under computer control is established. This ought to be the goal of QUADRU, but can only be achieved with the financial support of those who wish to obtain luminescence dates in southern Africa by southern Africans.