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Luminescence dating of desert dune sediments has generated many hundreds of ages, many used in reconstructions of Quaternary environmental changes, others in attempts to elucidate dune processes. Environmental and climatic interpretations of these records have proved problematic and it remains challenging to test hypotheses of the systematic response of dunefields to changes in external forcing in the past and to make predictions of the future. We use a method that quantifies dune sediment accumulation to interpret dune luminescence age datasets, rather than simply using the ages themselves as proxies of change. The Accumulation Intensity method allows periods of dune sediment accumulation, here over the timescale 10(2)-10(5)years, to be identified from compilations of dated sand sea stratigraphic sequences. We apply this approach to two of the largest dune age datasets, from southern Africa and Australia, testing whether or not dunefield accumulation has co-varied in the Late Quaternary and whether systematic relationships to external drivers at global, hemispheric, regional and local scales can be identified. Copyright (c) 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.