Abstract

Colour-magnitude diagrams in the Washington system are presented for the first time for five star clusters projected on to the outer region of the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC). The clusters are found to have ages in the range 0.1-1.0 Gyr, as derived from the fit of isochrones with Z = 0.004. This sample increases substantially the number of young clusters in the outer SMC - particularly in the south-east quadrant - with well-derived parameters. We combine our results with those for other clusters in the literature to derive as large and homogeneous a data base as possible (totalling 49 clusters) in order to study global effects. We find no conclusive evidence for a dispersion in the cluster ages and metallicities as a function of their distance from the galaxy centre, in the SMC outer region. L 114 and 115, although very distant, are very young clusters, lying in the bridge of the SMC and therefore most likely formed during the interaction which formed this feature. We also find very good agreement between the cluster age-metallicity relation (AMR) and the prediction from a bursting model from Pagel & Tautvaišienė with a burst that occurred 3 Gyr ago. Comparing the present cluster AMR with that derived by Harris & Zaritsky for field stars in the main body of the SMC, we find that field stars and clusters underwent similar chemical enrichment histories during approximately the last couple of Gyr, but their chemical evolution was clearly different between 4 and 10 Gyr ago. © 2007 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2007 RAS.