Here [1] is the Nature article in question, if you want to dig in.
Thanks! I'm sorry I didn't include that link. They say of the dating method:
> Younger samples are dated using single-grain quartz optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) and older samples by postinfrared infrared stimulated luminescence (pIR IRSL) from potassium-rich feldspars (Methods and Supplementary Information Section 2). The pIR IRSL approach used extensively in recent years²⁵,²⁶ does not suffer the problems that can generate large uncertainties associated with thermally transferred OSL (TT-OSL), as seen at Site C North (Fig. 1b)²⁰.
I had never heard of this archæological dating method before, but Wikipedia comes through as usual: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optically_stimulated_luminesce...
Not having read the full paper, I don't understand why they think the date at which the sand around the wood cooled from magma temperatures is relevant to when the carpenter cut the logs? Or maybe they're assuming the sand was exposed to the sun and optically bleached around the time of the carpenter, so any trapped charge is from after that? https://insu.hal.science/insu-03418831/file/MurrayEtAl-2021-... looks potentially relevant.
Yeah it's hard to believe this was done intentionally before the existence of stone tools... did they bite the notches?
Stone tools predate this carpentry by 2.9 million years, so people had been using stone tools for six times as long as of that time, as the time that separates them and us: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_tool#Pre-Mode_I
Not really—the topic is about wood drying, and this Nature article is the expanded footnote about how long humans have been working with wood.
EDIT: Sorry, you were referring to the GP's interest in the historic part. However, to me it sounded like you were offering this Nature article as a way to go deeper on wood drying, not the athropological footnote. Mea culpa, I was reading too fast. Thank you for the link!