qra.org.ukii . Quaternary Newsletter Vol. 129 February 2013. QUATERNARY NEWSLETTER. EDITOR: Dr Sven Lukas School of Geography, Queen Mary, University of London, Mile End Road, London,

Quaternary Newsletter Vol. 129 February 2013 i

NUMBER 129 FEBRUARY 2013

Quaternary Newsletter

A publication of theQuaternary Research Association

ii Quaternary Newsletter Vol. 129 February 2013

QUATERNARY NEWSLETTEREDITOR:Dr Sven Lukas School of Geography, Queen Mary, University of London, Mile End Road, London, E1 4NS. (e-mail: [email protected])

Instructions to authors

Quaternary Newsletter is issued in February, June and October. Articles, reviews, notices of forthcoming meetings, news of personal and joint research projects etc. are invited and should be sent to the Editor. Closing dates for submission of copy (news, notices, reports etc.) for the relevant numbers are 1st January, 1st May and 1st September. These dates will be strictly adhered to in order to expedite publication. Articles must be submitted at least 6 weeks before these dates in order to be reviewed and revised in time for the next issue of QN, otherwise they may appear in a subsequent issue.

Suggested word limits are as follows: obituaries (2000 words); articles (3000 words); reports on meetings (2000 words); reports on QRA grants (500 words); reviews (1000 words); letters to the Editor (500 words); abstracts (500 words). Authors submitting work as Word documents that include figures must send separate copies of the figures in .eps or .jpg format. In case of the latter, a minimum resolution of 300 dpi is required for accurate reproduction. Quaternary Research Fund and New Researchers Award Scheme reports should limit themselves to describing the results and significance of the actual research funded by QRA grants. The suggested format for these reports is as follows: (1) background and rationale (including a summary of how the grant facilitated the research), (2) results, (3) significance, (4) acknowledgments (if applicable). The reports should not (1) detail the aims and objectives of affiliated and larger projects (e.g. PhD topics), (2) outline future research and (3) cite lengthy reference lists. No more than one figure per report is necessary. Recipients of awards who have written reports are encouraged to submit full-length articles on related or larger research projects.

New: Detailed guidelines on the formatting of contributions are now available via the QRA webpage and from the editor, including an EndNote style file to help with the formatting of bibliographies for submissions to QN

© Quaternary Research Association, London 2013.

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COVER PHOTOGRAPHView overlooking the Veidivötn volcanic system (see report on QRA Field Meeting in South Iceland by Abbot and Bourne in this issue).

Quaternary Newsletter Vol. 129 February 2013 1

EDITORIAL

I would like to take this opportunity to make a few comments concerning the editing of QN.

Firstly, this issue features the first Review article, and it is fitting that this takes the reader to an area beyond the usual geographical boundaries covered in articles of QN. As announced last year, similar feature articles will appear in future issues as well, and I have started approaching individuals. However, these are by no means meant to be solely ‘editor’s choices’, so, if there are specific topics that members would like to see covered (or volunteer to write), please email me with suggestions.

Secondly, I am, as ever, indebted to all those who contribute to QN with their stimulating articles, discussions, reports etc. and show that the Quaternary community in the UK is a very vibrant one. I would also like to thank all of those who have reviewed articles and discussion pieces submitted to QN in a very constructive manner.

Lastly, thank you all for making my job as editor enjoyable – and I hope you will enjoy reading this ‘bumper issue’ (as a colleague of mine succinctly put it) as much as I did editing it!

With the best wishes for a successful year 2013,

Sven Lukas

2 Quaternary Newsletter Vol. 129 February 2013

ANNOUNCEMENTS

CHARLES TURNER AWARDED THE ALBRECHT PENCK MEDAL 2012

Dr Charles Turner (ex-Open University and currently a member of the Quaternary Palaeoenvironments Group, University of Cambridge) was awarded the highly prestigious Albrecht Penck Medal by the Deutsche Quatärvereinigung (DEUQUA) at their 36th General Meeting held this year in Bayreuth, Bavaria in September. The award is presented to to mark his ‘outstanding contribution to Quaternary research’.

Charles has spent his career as a palaeobotanist and Quaternary geologist, working in particular on interglacial sequences in Britain and overseas. He is also an accomplished linguist being fluent in German and French, as well as being a highly skilled field botanist. He undertook his PhD research in the Subdepartment of Quaternary Research, Cambridge, his thesis being devoted to the classic work on the lacustrine deposits at Marks Tey, Essex. Since then he has travelled extensively and published on a range of other topics, including the edited volume on the Early Middle Pleistocene in Europe (1996, Balkema, Rotterdam). He was President of the INQUA Subcommission of Quaternary Stratigraphy (SEQS) from 1987-95 and remains a full member of the Subcommission. He was also Vice-President of the QRA from 1980-82. He continues to study the Quaternary stratigraphy of Britain, Germany and the Russian Plain.


RETREAT OF THE LAST BRITISH-IRISH ICE SHEET; DO YOU HAVE A SITE THAT NEEDS DATING?

The British and Irish Quaternary community have an unprecedented opportunity for geochronometric dating to constrain margin retreat of the last ice sheet from it’s position on the continental shelf, across the marine-terrestrial transition until it backstepped some 10s of kilometres onshore. A five-year NERC consortium project (BRITICE-CHRONO; 2012-2017) has recently started, comprises 50 researchers and a budget to collect around 800 new dates spread across 14C, Optically Stimulated Luminescence (OSL) and Terrestrial Cosmogenic Nuclide (TCN) methods. The aim is to quality control existing published dates and collect new dates so that the British-Irish Ice Sheet becomes the best constrained retreating ice sheet in the world and of vital use for improving numerical ice sheet models that will forecast ice volume changes in Antarctica and Greenland. A directed and systematic programme of sampling arranged across eight shelf-to-onshore transects (Figure 1) has been established and from these locations samples of material will be collected by the investigators of the consortium project and will likely form the bulk of those dated. However, given the wide-ranging expertise and knowledge held in the wider community, BRITICE-CHRONO asks:

Do you know of any sites with suitable materials and contexts that could help inform the retreat history of the ice sheet?

Figure 1. The eight shelf-edge to onshore transects that form the basis of BRITICE-CHRONO’s sampling scheme for constraining ice sheet retreat. Those responsible for the scientific and fieldwork activities of each transect are listed.

Transect Leaders:

T1 East Shetland – Tom Bradwell. BGS Edinburgh.T2 S. North Sea – Dave Evans. Univ. Durham.T3 Irish Sea, east – Rich Chiverrell. Univ. Liverpool.T4 Irish Sea, west - James Scourse. Bangor Univ.T5 Galway Bay – Colm O’Cofaigh. Univ. Durham. T6 Donegal Bay – Sara Benneti. Univ. Ulster.T7 Malin Sea - Sara Benneti. Univ. Ulster.

T8 The Minch - Tom Bradwell. BGS Edinburgh.Note that each transect extends a few tens of kilometres onshore with the exception of T3 which is more extensive into the Cheshire-Shropshire basin. Cruise lines and moraine patterns are indicated.


Maybe it is a site that you have previously described and logged but never had the time or funds to get dated, maybe you are working on a project or PhD and have found material in contexts suitable for dating. If so and you want them dating and are happy to collaborate then please do get in touch. But note that, on this project 1) we are only interested and able to fund samples that directly contribute to our aims regarding constraining retreat of the last ice sheet, 2) only with regard to our eight transects, or close to them, 3) sites will need to be fully described, 4) some of our geochronology team will need to be present to help with sampling, 5) samples will need to be collected in 2013 and up to mid 2014, date assessments as fast as feasible and by end of 2015, 6) potential sites /samples for dating will be judged competitively alongside those collected by investigators in the consortium; we wish to spend dating effort on the best samples for the investigation and the hunch is that you might know of some. Please do get in touch with the Transect Leaders (listed in Figure 1) so that we can start to collaborate; we are already planning the fieldwork programme. Also note that if your likely targets are inaccessible we plan to use geophysical and coring (up to 6 m) methods to gain access to many sites; speak to Richard Chiverrell (Univ. Liverpool) about this if relevant.

Chris D. ClarkUniversity of Sheffield

Sheffield, S10 [email protected]

Project principal investigatorand on behalf of BRITICE-CHRONO consortium members


OBITUARYDAVID F. MAYHEW 1948-2012

David Mayhew, a leading practitioner in the field of Pleistocene vertebrate palaeontology, has died at 64 of an uncommon form of duodenal cancer. He died at home in Den Haag, The Netherlands on 2 October 2012. He was loved by many friends not only in Quaternary research circles, but in a range of different areas of life.

David dedicated himself to the study of small mammals, a group that has been of particular importance to Quaternary research. This is because their skeletal remains, and especially their teeth, are often well preserved in sedimentary sequences. Their rapid evolution through the last four million years has given rise to both diversity and speciation that is extremely useful in both evolutionary and biostratigraphical studies.

David was born in Bedford, England and educated at Southend High School. He entered St Catharine’s College, Cambridge with a scholarship to read Natural Sciences in 1967. For his final

[David Mayhew at home in Den Haag, Netherlands (photograph by A.Geels, June 2009).]

year he studied Zoology, obtaining his degree in 1970. During his time at St Catharine’s he was mentored and supervised by the legendary Sydney

Smith, one of the two founding editors of the Darwin Correspondence Project and a paradigm of the old-fashioned bachelor don. They had a wary relationship, but David greatly appreciated the unwavering support and encouragement that Sydney gave his students. David was hugely inspired in his final year by the last set lectures by F.R. (Rex) Parrington, the eminent palaeontologist and Director of the University Museum of Zoology. After he graduated David began a PhD under the supervision of Kenneth (Ken) Joysey, who had taken over from Parrington as Director of the Museum. David’s doctoral work concerned Pleistocene fossil mammals. His interests included mostly rabbits and hares, squirrels and beavers, and the resulting dissertation was notable for its accuracy, attention to detail, and very fine drawings. Indeed, David was a talented artist his work reflecting his love of nature and landscape, and in one of his much


later incarnations held a public exhibition of his paintings. The dissertation has stood the test of time unusually well, and is still a point of reference for some of those in the area of study.

After David received his PhD in 1975, following a bout of major illness, he moved to Utrecht University (1975-1977) to take up a post-doctoral Royal Society European Research Fellowship working on the biostratigraphy of the Plio-Pleistocene of Crete. Shortly afterwards he began work on arvicolids, later publishing a major review of the British Early Pleistocene assemblages (Mayhew and Stuart, 1986). Among several important conclusions arising from this work was the realisation that the British Early Pleistocene sequence represented a relatively limited time, and included a substantial time gap between the Pastonian and Cromerian Stages. At this point however David decided to leave academic research, confiding that he had become dissatisfied with what he saw as the shortcomings of academic life, and he took a position with the science publishing company, Elsevier. His decision to do this rather surprised his friends who, without exception, regarded him very highly as a scientist. Throughout his life, however, David enjoyed both freedom to follow his own promptings, and a certain degree of comfort: the latter does not usually feature highly in the early years of a life in academic research.

David’s job at Elsevier in Amsterdam in Excerpta Medica meant that he was based in the Netherlands, and when he later joined the European Patent Office (EPO, Den Haag) it was a natural geographical progression. His experience during this period included a range of IT work in system analysis and design, and project and general management. In the 1980s he helped to develop SGML, the precursor of HTML and XML, and its application to the scientific publishing process. He was also involved in the development of patent documentation information systems, covering patent literature globally and made widely available via the Internet.

During his years at Elsevier and the EPO, however, he never lost his interest in Quaternary science, and when, in 2001, he retired early (effectively buying his freedom on the strength of property he had bought during his high-earning years), he devoted himself again to studying Pleistocene mammals. To do this, he equipped himself with microscope and camera, he renewed contacts with those who had remained in the field, he made new friends and colleagues, and he just got on with it. During this period he became a Research Associate at Naturalis Biodiversity Centre, Rotterdam Natural History Museum and since 2010 an affiliate of the AHOB project (Ancient Human Occupation of Britain) project, a consortium of scientists studying the early traces of humanity in Britain. His main research interests up to the time of his death were the evolution and taxonomy of voles (Arvicolidae, Rodentia), and the biostratigraphy of the Pliocene and Pleistocene in Europe, and especially the North Sea Basin. He was a strong advocate for taxonomic revision of the rapidly evolving arvicolids


which he believed was required to obtain better biostratigraphic results for correlation. He considered that the original descriptions of many arvicolid taxa are insufficient for modern work. To overcome this problem he documented the types with digital photography and re-examined specimens of as many of the fossil taxa as possible, in order to come to soundly based revision and simplification. This work involved him in international collaboration and travel to musea throughout Europe. His final article was completed only weeks before he died, but his work was far from finished.

David’s scientific work was aided by language knowledge including German, French and Dutch. He also worked as a specialist medical translator of Dutch and German to English and had just (to the amazement of himself as well as others) completed a translation of a colleague’s scientific monograph from Russian into English.

After he had retired from his job, David also found time to hold an exhibition of his art, mentioned above, and to release a CD of his own songs (on which he sang and accompanied himself, with help from several musician friends) entitled What I did on my holidays. As usual, he was diffident about his creations, and although he was more than happy to give a copy of his CD to his friends, they had to twist his arm to get him even rather bashfully to admit to this and his other achievements. He was, indeed, a modest person, and although he was hugely talented, it was one of his engaging features that he, himself, did not fully realise this. The result was that he occasionally appeared mystified as to why the rest of us were sometimes unable to see what was very obvious to him.

David was always great fun to be with, despite being prone to strands of melancholy that ran deep: it was not until the later years of his life that he finally came to terms with aspects of what he remembered as a difficult childhood. The decline and death of his mother from 1995 to 1999 coincided with his separation, in 1998, from his wife of 20 years, Uschi, a period of frenetic overwork from 1999 to 2000. It was a very painful time for him. In 1996 Mareike, who became his new partner, had introduced him to the writings of the psychologist and analyst Alice Miller, and eventually these had a great, and positive, effect on him, resulting in many cherished insights and in a release of new energy and enthusiasm.

A one-day meeting of invited presentations to celebrate David Mayhew’s work will be held at St.Catherine’s College, Cambridge on 10 September 2013. All are welcome to attend. Details will be available shortly from P. Gibbard ([email protected])

Publications by David MayhewMayhew, D.F. Updated biostratigraphic scheme for the Early Pleistocene of the UK based on arvicolids (Mammalia, Rodentia), unpublished. - an update of Mayhew and Stuart (1986) (cf. below).


Mayhew, D.F. (2012). Revision of the fossil vole assemblage (Mammalia, Rodentia, Arvicolidae) from Pleistocene deposits at Kislang, Hungary. Palaeontology, 55, Article first published online : 9 Jan 2012, DOI: 10.1111/ j.1475-4983.2011.01115.x

Mayhew, D.F. (2012). Burrowing into the past: history of research on the Norwich and Weybourne Crag voles (Arvicolidae, Rodentia). In: Dixon, R. (ed.), A Celebration of Suffolk Geology. GeoSuffolk 10th Anniversary volume, 243-249.

Mayhew, D.F. (2011). West European arvicolid evidence of intercontinental connections during the Early Pleistocene. Quaternary International. Available online 18 August 2011.http:dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2011.08.005 Mayhew, D.F. (2010). West European arvicolid evidence of intercontinental connections during the Early Pleistocene. In: Titov, V.V. and Tesakov, A.S. (eds.) Quaternary stratigraphy of and paleontology of southern Russia: connections between Europe, Africa and Asia. INQUA SEQS Conference, Rostov, June 2010, 101-102.

Mayhew, D.F. (2009). Case 3483. Villanyia Kretzoi, 1956 (Mammalia, Rodentia, Arvicolidae): proposed conservation of usage by designation of a neotype for the type species Villanyia exilis Kretzoi, 1956. Bulletin of. Zoological Nomenclature, 66, 159-163.

Mayhew, D.F. (2009). The type material and enamel structure of Villanyia exilis Kretzoi 1956 (Arvicolidae, Rodentia). Acta Zoologica Cracoviensia,52, 81-94

Mayhew, D.F., Dieleman, F.E., Boele, J., Verhaard, L. and van den Hoek Ostende, L.W. (2008). Mimomys hajnackensis from the Pliocene of the Netherlands. Netherlands Journal of Geosciences, 87-2, 181-188.

Mayhew, D.F., de Vos, J. and van Veen, J. (2008). First record of Trogontherium cuvieri (Rodentia, Castoridae) from the Oosterschelde. Deinsea, 12, 17-22.

Mayhew, D.F. (2008). The second record of Borsodia (Arvicolidae, Rodentia) from the Pliocene of the Netherlands. Deinsea, 12, 11-15.

Mayhew, D. (2006). Small is beautiful: fossil voles as stratigraphic aids. Deposits Magazine issue 8.

Reumer, J. Mayhew, D.F. and van Veen, J. (2005). Small mammals from the later Pliocene Oosterschelde dredgings. Deinsea, 11, 103-118.

Mayhew, D.F. and Gibbard, P.L. (1998). Early Pleistocene small mammal remains and pollen flora from the crag at Weybourne, Norfolk, England. Mededelingen Nederlands Instituut voor Toegepaste Geowetenschappen TNO, 60, 263-269.

Mayhew D.F. (1996). The extinct murids of Crete. In: Reese D.S. (ed.), Pleistocene and Holocene fauna of Crete and its first settlers. Monographs in World Archaeology 28, 167–71. Prehistory Press, Madison.


Mayhew, D.F. (1990). Small mammal remains form the Early Pleistocene crag at Bulcamp, Suffolk. Bulletin of the Norfolk Geological Society, 39, 59-85.

Mayhew, D.F. and Stuart, A.J. (1986). Stratigraphic and Taxonomic revision of the fossil vole remains (Rodentia, Microtinae) from the Lower Pleistocene deposits of Eastern England. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Series B, 312, 431-485.

Mayhew, D.F. (1979). The vertebrate fauna of Bramerton. Appendix III in Funnell, B.M., Norton, P.E.P. and West, R.G. (1979) The crag of Bramerton, near Norwich, Norfolk. Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London Series B, 287, 489-534.

Mayhew, D.F. (1979). Evolution of a dental character in the beaver Castor fiber L. (Mammalia, Rodentia). Zoological Journal of the Linnaean Society, 65, 177-184.

Mayhew, D.F. (1978). Late Pleistocene small mammals from Arnissa (Macedonia, Greece). Proceedings of the Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen Series B, 81, 302-321.

Mayhew, D.F. (1978). Reinterpretation of the extinct beaver Trogontherium (Mammalia, Rodentia). Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, 281, 407-438.

Mayhew, D.F. (1977). The endemic Pleistocene Murids of Crete I and II. Proceedings of the Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, Series B, 80, 182-214.

Mayhew, D.F.. (1977). Avian predators as accumulators of fossil mammal material. Boreas, 6, 25-31.

Mayhew, D.F. (1975).The Quaternary history of some British Rodents and Lagomorphs. Ph.D. thesis, University of Cambridge.

Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Mareike Zambuto and Arno Geels (Den Haag) in the compilation of this obituary and for supplying the photograph of David.

A.E. FridayUniversity Museum of Zoology, University of Cambridge

Downing Street, Cambridge CB2 3EJ, England

P.L. GibbardCambridge Quaternary, Department of Geography

University of Cambridge, Downing PlaceCambridge CB2 3EN, England


JAMES CROLL AWARD 2013The James Croll Medal for 2013 is awarded to Professor Rick Battarbee. Rick Battarbee is one of the most accomplished physical geographers of his generation. He has made ground-breaking contributions to Quaternary science: from his classic work on the use of lake sediments to document the effects of acid rain on freshwater ecosystems, to the wider concerns of Quaternary (particularly Holocene) global climate change. His work over a long and productive career has helped put UK science at the forefront of international research in these fields. Many of the approaches he pioneered

are now standard techniques within the discipline and he led the global field in palaeolimnology as the first Chairman of the International Palaeolimnology Association. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society and his work has been recognised by awards from universities and learned societies across the world, including Scandinavia, Russia, China and the USA.

Rick graduated from UCL in 1968, developed his interest in palaeolimnology through a PhD at the New University of Ulster (supervised by Frank Oldfield), followed by postdoctoral positions at Uppsala and Ulster, before returning to UCL in 1976, where he is now Emeritus Professor of Environmental Change and a Principal Research Associate. During his years as a research fellow, Rick laid the foundations for a generation of palaeolimnological research and research workers in developing techniques for exploiting the potential of the muddy archives of lake sediments. His work on eutrophication (Battarbee, 1978), quantification of diatoms (Battarbee, 1973; Battarbee and Kneen, 1982) and his involvement with work on magnetic susceptibility (Thompson et al., 1975) and dating of recent sediments (e.g. Oldfield et al., 1978) and numerous publications on diatom taxonomy, are typical of his early interest in development of the fundamental tools of the palaeolimnological trade and remain some of the best cited papers in the field.

During the 1980s, Rick turned his attention towards using Quaternary techniques to resolve questions of recent environmental change and management in a way that had never previously been attempted. The work he led on lake acidification stands as one of the most prominent examples of the way in which study of


past change can contribute to the diagnosis and resolution of anthropogenic impact on the environment (Flower and Battarbee, 1983; Battarbee, 1984), and helped drive UK policy towards managing acid rain, arguably the central global environmental issue of the 1980s. Rick and his co-workers, especially John Birks, Steve Juggins and Sheri Fritz, were some of the earliest adopters of the now widely applied transfer function approach to reconstruction of environmental change from Quaternary microfossils (e.g. Birks et al., 1990; Fritz et al., 1991), and saw the power and potential of this approach in quantifying inferences of environmental change long before many others. Methodologically, Rick’s work is characterised by a thorough and critical approach and his 1985 paper in Nature (Battarbee et al., 1985) is as an exemplar of deductive Quaternary science at its very best. The theme of integrating palaeolimnological records with ecological data and long term monitoring, and applying this understanding to environmental problems is characteristic of much of Rick’s research. It is impossible to do this body of work full justice here, but typical examples are the Surface Waters Acidification Project (SWAP, Battarbee and Renberg, 1990), establishing critical loads of acid deposition for lakes (Battarbee et al., 1993), promoting the use of palaeolimnology in relation to the EU Water Framework Directive (e.g. Bennion and Battarbee, 2007), establishing the ecological status of lakes and their reference conditions (Battarbee et al., 2008, 2011) and restoration targets (Bennion et al., 2011), and reconstructing recent environmental and climatic change in European mountain lakes (Battarbee et al., 2002).

Rick’s contributions extend well beyond his own immediate research. He established the Environmental Change Research Centre (ECRC) and its successful consultancy arm (ENSIS Ltd.) at UCL. ECRC rapidly became a world-leading centre for long term environmental change in lakes, especially as it relates to pollution and climate change. He has contributed enormously to international science programmes, especially through his leadership of activities such as IGBP-PAGES LIMPACS (Human and Climate Interactions with Lake Ecosystems),IGBP-PAGES PEP3 (Pole-Equator-Pole 3) (Battarbee et al., 2004), ESF-HOLIVAR (Holocene Climate Variability) (Battarbee and Binney, 2008) and several major EU research projects, most recently EU-Eurolimpacs (Impact of Climate Change on European Freshwater Ecosystems) (Kernan et al., 2010). Finally, no account of Rick’s achievements would be complete without mention of the large and successful research teams he has built and worked with. Rick is directly or indirectly responsible for inspiring and training a huge number of scientists who understand the importance of Quaternary records in understanding and solving problems related to environmental and climatic change.

In summary, Rick is a world leader in his field and one of the most outstanding members of the QRA. He has made fundamental contributions to Quaternary


palaeolimnology and has bridged the gap between science and policy. The QRA are delighted to award the James Croll Medal for 2013 to Rick Battarbee.

References Battarbee, R.W. (1973). New method for estimation of absolute microfossil numbers, with reference especially to diatoms. Limnology and Oceanography, 18, 647-653. Battarbee, R.W. (1978). Observations on the recent history of Lough Neagh and its drainage basin. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, B281, 303345.Battarbee, R.W. (1984). Diatom analysis and the acidification of lakes. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, B305, 451-477. Battarbee, R.W. (2000). Palaeolimnological approaches to climate change, with special regard to the biological record. Quaternary Science Reviews, 19, 107-124. Battarbee, R.W. and Binney, H.A. (eds.) (2008). Natural climate variability and global warming: a Holocene perspective. Wiley-Blackwell, Chichester, 276 pp.Battarbee, R.W. and Kneen, M.J. (1982). The use of electronically counted microspheres in absolute diatom analysis. Limnology and Oceanography, 27, 184-188.Battarbee, R.W. and Renberg, I. (1990). The Surface Water Acidification Project (SWAP) Palaeolimnology Programme. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, B327, 227-232. Battarbee, R.W., Allott, T.E.H., Kreiser, A., Juggins, S. (1993). Setting critical loads for UK surface waters: the diatom model. In: Hornung, M. and Skeffington, R.A. (Eds.). Critical Loads: Concepts and Applications, HMSO, London, 99-103.Battarbee, R.W., Flower, R.J., Appleby, P.G., Stevenson, A.C., Rippey, B. (1985). Lake acidification in Galloway - a paleoecological test of competing hypotheses. Nature, 314, 350-352.Battarbee R.W., Gasse F., and Stickley C.E. (eds.) (2004). Past Climate Variability through Europe and Africa. Kluwer, Dordrecht, the Netherlands, 610 pp. Battarbee, R.W., Grytnes, J.A., Thompson, R., Appleby, P.G., Catalan, J., Korhola, A., Birks, H.J.B., Heegaard, E., Lami, A. (2002). Comparing palaeolimnological and instrumental evidence of climate change for remote mountain lakes over the last 200 years. Journal of Paleolimnology, 28, 161-179.Battarbee, R.W., Monteith, D.T., Juggins, S., Simpson, G.L., Shilland, E.M., Flower, R.J., Kreiser, A.M. (2008). Assessing the accuracy of diatom-based transfer functions in defining reference pH conditions for acidified lakes in the United Kingdom. The Holocene, 8, 57-67.


Battarbee, R.W., Morley, D., Bennion, H., Simpson, G.L., Hughes, M., and Bauere, V. (2011). A palaeolimnological meta-database for assessing the ecological status of lakes. Journal of Paleolimnology, 45, 405-414.Bennion, H. and Battarbee, R. (2007). The European Union Water Framework Directive: opportunities for palaeolimnology. Journal of Paleolimnology, 38, 285-295.Birks, H.J.B., Line, J.M., Juggins, S., Stevenson, A.C., and ter Braak, C.J.F. (1990). Diatoms and pH reconstruction. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, B327, 263-278.Flower, R.J. and Battarbee, R.W. (1983). Diatom evidence for recent acidification of 2 Scottish Lochs. Nature, 305, 130-133. Fritz, S.C., Juggins, S., Battarbee, R.W. and Engstrom, D.R. (1991). Reconstruction of past changes in salinity and climate using a diatom-based transfer function. Nature 352: 706-708. Kernan, M., Moss, B. and Battarbee, R.W. (2010). Climate Change Impacts on Freshwater Ecosystems. Blackwell Publishing Limited, Oxford. Oldfield, F., Appleby, P.G. and Battarbee, R.W. (1978). Alternative Pb-210 dating - results from New-Guinea Highlands and Lough Erne. Nature, 271, 339-342.Thompson, R., Battarbee, R.W., O’Sullivan, P.E. and Oldfield, F. (1975). Magnetic-susceptibility of lake sediments. Limnology and Oceanography, 20, 687-698.

The James Croll medal The James Croll Medal was instituted by the QRA in 2011 as its senior award and is named in honour of James Croll (1821-1890). Croll is most closely associated with fundamental work on the astronomical theory of the ice ages, but he also made seminal contributions on the glacial geology of Scotland, on the mechanisms that drive ocean circulation and the impact of that circulation on recent climate, on tidal theory and the rotation of the Earth. These are all major issues that occupy Quaternary scientists to this day. Croll was effectively self-taught. His work and example demonstrate that individuals from all backgrounds can rise to national eminence and generate science of lasting and major international impact, that it is not who you are or where you come from but what you do that is important. These are the qualities that the QRA seeks to celebrate in the award of the James Croll Medal. The Medal is therefore awarded to a member of the QRA who has not only made an outstanding contribution to the field of Quaternary science, but whose work has also had a significant international impact. Previous recipients of the James Croll Medal are Professor Geoffrey Boulton FRS (2011) and Professor Chris Stringer FRS (2012).


THE 2013 LEWIS PENNY MEDALWe are delighted to announce that in its seventh year, the Lewis Penny medal is awarded to Dr Graeme Swindles of the University of Leeds in recognition of his outstanding work on Holocene palaeoclimate and stratigraphy. The Lewis Penny Medal is in memory of Lewis and his contributions to Quaternary science and his support of the QRA, and was made possible through the generosity of many of Lewis’s former students, friends and colleagues. The prize is intended to recognize a young or new research worker who has made a significant contribution to the Quaternary stratigraphy of the British Isles and its maritime environment, including adjacent areas of continental Europe that have relevance to the British Isles.

GRAEME SWINDLES

Graeme Swindles is an exceptional early career Quaternary scientist who has made major advances in our understanding of Holocene climate variability in Britain and Ireland through peatland palaeoclimate records, whilst also making significant contributions to other areas such as European tephrochronology, testate amoebae analysis, environmental archaeology and fundamental process-based understanding of long-term peatland-climate responses.

Graeme’s achievements in the six years since he was awarded his PhD (2006) have been remarkable, and include over 50 publications (journal articles, field guide contributions and published reports, with >20 as lead author). He has already gained an international reputation in peatland-based palaeo-climate science, primarily as a result of an impressive body of work in the North of Ireland. His work initially centred on the generation of peatland records here to test the nature and timing of solar-forced climate change at 750 cal. BC (the so-called ‘2.8 event’) (Swindles et al., 2007a, 2007b; Plunkett and Swindles, 2008) and he went on to develop the first continuous late-Holocene palaeoclimate records from the North of Ireland (Swindles et al., 2010). His work in this field is marked by a thorough and critical approach often questioning accepted wisdom and challenging assumed relationships. Amongst other work, he developed a critical analysis of the climate significance of the Irish bog oak record (Swindles and Plunkett, 2010), tested application of testate amoebae transfer functions (Swindles et al., 2009), and examined the periodicities in peatland records (Swindles et al., 2012a). His most recent work


has taken this area of science into a new realm using ecohydrological models and high-resolution palaeoecological data to examine how peatland internal dynamics provide challenges for peat-based climatic reconstruction (Swindles et al., 2012b; a research spotlight in EOS in 2012). He is now developing peatland palaeoclimate projects far-removed from temperate Northern Ireland in the Peruvian Amazon and the Scandinavian arctic, whilst also undertaking innovative work with hydrologists and modellers to model peatland response to climate change.

A strong focus on methodological development marks out Graeme’s research. He has used tephrochronology extensively and contributed papers reviewing tephrochronology in the North of Ireland (Swindles, 2008), the presence of the 1947 Hekla tephra (Rea et al., 2011) and used sedimentary tephras in Northern Europe to calculate ash fall probabilities (Swindles et al., 2011; an ‘Editors Choice’ in Nature, Science and Nature Geoscience). Testate amoebae analysis is another area where he has sought not only to use the technique but to test it (Swindles and Roe, 2007) and seek novel applications including lake water quality (Farroqui et al., 2012) and forensic science (Swindles and Ruffel, 2009). An account of Graeme’s achievements would not be complete without reference to his wider contributions to Quaternary science activities and outreach. He has contributed to QRA and IQUA field meetings (e.g. Swindles, 2008), and a number of QRA discussion and other meetings. His work has appeared in the press and publications such as NERC’s Planet Earth and he has worked with local organizations such as Yorkshire Dales Landscape Research Trust and the Shetland Amenity Trust.

In summary, Graeme has made a significant and wide ranging contribution to many areas of Holocene palaeoclimate and environmental science both in Ireland and further afield, and has shown enormous energy and dedication via his research outputs and his involvement in many collaborative projects. The QRA is delighted to recognize his achievements with the award of the 2013 Lewis Penny medal.

ReferencesFarroqui, A., Kumar, A. and Swindles, G.T. (2012). Thecamoebian communities as proxies of seasonality in lake sadatal in the Ganga-Yamuna Plains of North India. Palaeontologia Electronica, 15(1), 3A, 19p.

Plunkett, G. and Swindles, G.T. (2008). Determining the Sun’s influence on Late Glacial and Holocene climates: a focus on climate response to centennial-scale solar forcing at 2800 cal. BP. Quaternary Science Reviews, 27, 175-184.

Rea, H.A., Swindles, G.T. and Roe, H.M. (2012). The Hekla 1947 tephra in the North of Ireland: distribution, concentration and geochemistry. Journal of Quaternary Science, 27, 425-431.


Swindles, G.T. (2008). Dead Island (Moyagoney) bog, County Londonderry. 2008. In: Whitehouse, N.J., Roe, H.M., McCarron, S. and Knight, J. (eds.) North of Ireland: Field Guide. Quaternary Research Association. London, 100-105. [NB: GTS also contributed to 3 other chapters in this guide].

Swindles, G.T. and Plunkett, G. (2010). Testing the palaeoclimatic significance of the Northern Irish bog oak record. The Holocene 20, 155-159.

Swindles, G.T. and Roe, H.M. (2007). Examining the dissolution characteristics of testate amoebae (Protozoa: Rhizopoda) in low pH conditions: Implications for peatland palaeoclimate studies. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, 252, 486–496.

Swindles, G.T. and Ruffell, A. (2009). A preliminary investigation into the use of testate amoebae for the discrimination of forensic soil samples. Science and Justice, 49, 182-190.

Swindles, G.T., Plunkett, G. and Roe, H.M. (2007a). A multi-proxy climate record from a raised bog in County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland: a critical examination of the link between bog surface wetness and solar variability. Journal of Quaternary Science, 22, 667-679.

Swindles, G.T., Plunkett, G. and Roe, H.M. (2007b.) A delayed climatic response to solar forcing at 2800 cal. BP: multi-proxy evidence from three Irish peatlands. The Holocene, 17, 177-182.

Swindles, G.T., Charman, D.J., Roe, H.M. and Sansum, P.A. (2009). Environmental controls on peatland testate amoebae (Protozoa: Rhizopoda) in the North of Ireland: Implications for Holocene palaeoclimate studies. Journal of Paleolimnology, 42, 123-140.

Swindles, G.T., Blundell, A. Roe, H.M. and Hall, V.A. (2010). A 4500-year proxy climate record from peatlands in the North of Ireland: the identification of widespread summer ‘drought phases’? Quaternary Science Reviews, 29, 1577-1589.

Swindles, G.T., Lawson, I.T., Savov, I.P., Connor, C.B. and Plunkett, G. (2011). A 7000-yr perspective on volcanic ash clouds affecting Northern Europe. Geology, 39, 887-890.

Swindles, G.T., Patterson, R.T., Roe, H.M. and Galloway, J.M. (2012a). Evaluating periodicities in peat-based climate proxy records. Quaternary Science Reviews 41, 94-103.

Swindles, G.T., Morris, P.J., Baird, A.J., Blaauw, M. and Plunkett, G. (2012b). Ecohydrological feedbacks confound peat-based climate reconstructions. Geophysical Research Letters, L11401.

Professor Dan CharmanQRA President


HOLOCENE PALAEOCLIMATE AND PEATLAND STRATIGRAPHY OF THE BRITISH ISLES

Dr Graeme Swindles (School of Geography, University of Leeds)

Introduction

I would like to sincerely thank the QRA for awarding me the Lewis Penny medal, which is a great honour. My interest in the environment started as a child, walking in the County Antrim hills with my father, looking at different rocks and archaeological sites, encountering many peat bogs and lakes on the way! My interest in Quaternary science owes much to my time as an undergraduate student at Durham University and in particular the inspiring lectures of Ian Simmons, Ben Horton and Anthony Long. The next stage on this journey was undertaking a PhD entitled ‘Reconstruction of Holocene climate change from peatlands in the North of Ireland’ with Helen Roe at Queen’s University Belfast. My PhD was examined by Dan Charman and Valerie Hall and awarded in 2006. After my PhD I left academia for just over a year and worked as an environmental scientist before taking up a lectureship at the University of Bradford (2007-2010). I have been a lecturer in Earth System Dynamics at the University of Leeds since 2010. I have quite broad research interests in Quaternary science which I outline below:

Peatlands and palaeoclimate

I am particularly interested in the long-term ecohydrological dynamics of global peatland and how peatlands respond to climate change. Research on peat-based climate records has a long history in the UK and my research has built on the pioneering work of many others (e.g. Barber, 1981; Barber et al., 1994; Blackford and Chambers, 1993; Charman et al., 1999; Woodland et al., 1998; Hendon et al., 2001; Mauquoy et al., 2002). My work has produced the first proxy climate records from the North of Ireland from tephra-linked sites, including the identification of key climate shifts (Swindles et al., 2007a, b, 2010) and an evaluation of periodicities in peat-based climate records (Swindles et al., 2012a). The data from Northern Ireland was also used in a critical analysis of the Irish bog oak record, which underpins the 14C calibration curve (Swindles and Plunkett, 2010). In recent times, I have considered peatlands as dynamics ecohydrological systems and used an ecohydrological peatland development model (Morris et al., 2011) and high-resolution palaeoecological data to examine the relationship between rapid hydrological fluctuations in peatlands and climatic forcing (Swindles et al, 2012b). This work proposes that we should be careful when interpreting reconstructed water table magnitudes as they are not a direct metric of climate, and ecohydrological feedbacks can potentially lead to a degree of homeostasis in peatland water table behaviour. This suggests


that peat-based climate records are akin to event stratigraphies, with key events driven by climate, but with other parts of the record relating to internal peatland dynamics, which is similar to some of the comments in the early literature (e.g. Aaby, 1976; Barber, 1981). It is now important that we consider peat-based climate records in a more process-orientated framework, including developing ways of extracting the climate signal from reconstructions. Multi-site data is probably the key to this (e.g. Charman et al., 2006) along with the application of robust chronologies with quantified errors and appropriate statistical methods (Swindles et al., in prep-a). Ecohydrological models may allow us to examine the relative sensitivity of peatlands to different climate drivers.

Testate amoebaeI employ testate amoebae as environmental indicators in peatlands as well as other environments. Much important work on testate amoebae has been done in the UK (e.g. Woodland et al., 1999; Charman et al., 2000; Roe et al., 2002). I have worked on the preservation of the group in peats (Swindles and Roe, 2007), their ecology in burnt peatlands (Turner and Swindles, 2012) and their application in palaeolimnology (Roe et al., 2010, Patterson et al., 2012; Qin et al., 2008, 2011). In addition, I developed a testate amoebae-based hydrology transfer function for peatlands in the North of Ireland, which was used to independently test the European ACCROTELM model (Swindles et al., 2009). I have also been involved in recent studies testing the accuracy and precision of testate-amoebae based transfer functions (Payne et al., 2012; Turner et al., in press). Testate amoebae are important environmental indicators in peats, but there are still some questions surrounding taxonomy as well as the relationship between testate amoebae communities and water table dynamics.

Tephra scienceMy work on crypotephras follows much pioneering work by UK scientists (e.g. Dugmore, 1989; Hunt and Hill, 1993; Pilcher et al., 1995). I have worked extensively on the use of tephra for dating palaeoenvironmental records (mostly peats) in Ireland (e.g. Swindles et al., 2010) and the Shetland Isles (Swindles et al., in prep-b). As well using tephras for dating, I completed the first comprehensive analysis of Holocene sedimentary tephras and historic ash falls in Northern Europe and carried out a time series and probability analysis on the data (Swindles et al., 2011). It was found that in the past 1000 years, volcanic ash clouds reached northern Europe with a mean return interval of 56 years (the range of return intervals is between 6 and 115 years) and probabilistic modelling showed that there is a 16% probability of a tephra fallout event in northern Europe in any 10-year period (Swindles et al., 2011). Of course these values must be considered as conservative estimates due to the nature of tephra capture and preservation in sediments and peats. I have also worked on regional overviews of tephra distribution including Hekla 1947, which was the


most recent tephra to affect N. Europe prior to Eyjafjallajökull 2010 (Swindles et al., 2008; Rea et al., 2012). There are still important questions surrounding the spatial patchiness of tephra layers (e.g. Dugmore et al., 1996; Rea et al., 2012) and taphonomic problems of reworking and redistribution in peatlands and lake sediments (e.g. Boygle, 1999; Payne and Gehrels 2010). There is also a need for a comprehensive investigation involving modelling to examine the relationships between tephra in the air, on the ground and in sediment/peats.

Past human responses to climate changeI am interested in the integration of palaeoenvironmental/palaeoclimatic and archaeological data to carry out critical examinations of past human responses to climate change. I have previously worked on environmental change in early Medieval Ireland (Kerr et al., 2009) and am currently examining human responses to climate change in the Irish first millennium BC in Ireland (e.g. Armit et al., 2012). In addition, my research has included the generation of key palaeoenvironmental data that helped pinpoint the site of the Battle of Bosworth (Wheeler et al., 2010).

Quantitative methods in palaeoenvironmental scienceI am interested in quantitative analysis of microfossil and palaeoclimatic data including multivariate techniques, time series analysis and statistical modelling in Quaternary as well as pre-Quaternary palaeoenvironmental research (e.g. Patterson et al., 2011; Swindles et al., 2012; Galloway et al., 2012).

Current and future workI am currently involved with the following projects:Long term dynamics of ombrotrophic peatlands in Peruvian Amazonia (funded by The Royal Society, PI).Mobility, climate and culture: Re-modelling the Irish Iron Age (funded by The British Academy, Co-I).Holocene environmental history of the Tibbett-to-Contwoyto Ice Road Canada (funded by NSERC Canada, Co-I).Investigating coastline dynamics in an increasingly stormy world (funded by the White Rose University Consortium, Co-I).Understanding recent changes in Arctic palsa mires (funded by WUN-network).Examining autogenic and allogenic factors in peatland development using models and palaeoenvironmental data.Modelling peatlands under future climates.Examining ecology of testate amoebae in sites with extensive hydrological monitoring networks.


Acknowledgements

I joined the QRA in 2002 and would like to express my gratitude for the honour of receiving the Lewis Penney medal. The QRA is a splendid organisation, providing encouragement for early career scientists, promoting academic debate, and offering financial support to all UK Quaternary scientists. I recommend all research students to attend the QRA postgraduate meetings; you will make many life-long friends there (as I have!). There have been so many people who have contributed to my research, and I apologise in advance for those inevitable oversights. I would particularly like to thank my PhD supervisor Helen Roe (QUB). It was Helen who inspired me to become a Quaternary scientist and I am forever grateful. I am so pleased that we have become very good friends and continue to collaborate on a number of research projects. I have split the other people I would like to specifically thank into two categories:

Earth and environmental science: Andy Baird, Ivan Savov, Antony Blundell, Ian Lawson, Sheila Palmer, Joe Holden, Emanuel Gloor, Katy Roucoux, Jonathan Carrivick and Clare Woulds (Leeds); Gill Plunkett, Valerie Hall, Maarten Blaauw and Alastair Ruffell (QUB); Tim Patterson, Lisa Neville and Andrew Macumber (Carleton); Dan Charman (Exeter); Mariusz Lamentowicz (Poznan); Katherine Selby (York); Jennifer Galloway (GSC); Paul Morris (Reading); Richard Payne (MMU); Qin Yangmin (CUG); Chuck Connor (South Florida); François De Vleeschouwer (CNRS); Ben Gearey (Cork); Tom Hill (NHM).

Figure 1. Bailing out a leaky boat in Peruvian Amazonia. The edge of the Aucayacu peatland is on the far side of the river (Photo by Ed Turner).


Archaeology: Ian Armit, Katharina Becker, Jane Wheeler, Zoe Outram and Cathy Batt (Bradford), Timothy Taylor (Vienna), Thom Kerr (QUB), Conor McDermott (TCD), Julia Lee-Thorp (Oxford).

Many thanks to all who have been involved in my recent field campaigns in Ireland, Britain, Amazonia, Arctic Canada and Arctic Sweden, and the support staff at the Universities of Leeds and Bradford.

I would also like to thank all the undergraduate students I have taught for always providing intellectual stimulation and many great times in the field, laboratory and lecture theatre. I also want to thank my wonderful PhD students for being great scientists as well as good friends: Ed Turner, Liz Watson and Sarah Edwards (Leeds), Garry Rushworth, Alex Surtees and Sarah-Jane Clelland (Bradford) and Heidi Rea (Belfast). I’d also particularly like to thank my family, Thomas, Lynda and Adele Swindles and fiancée Claire Spackman for their support as well as enduring frequent diversions into peat bogs or to see other features of geological/archaeological interests!

ReferencesAaby, B. (1976). Cyclic climatic variations in climate over the past 5500 years reflected in raised bogs. Nature, 263, 281–84.

Armit, I. Swindles, G.T., Becker, K. (2012). From dates to demography in later prehistoric Ireland? Experimental approaches to the meta-analysis of large 14C data-sets. Journal of Archaeological Science, 40, 433–438.

Barber, K.E. (1981). Peat Stratigraphy and Climatic Change: A Palaeoecological Test of the Theory of Cyclic Peat Bog Regeneration. Balkema, Rotterdam.

Barber, K.E., Chambers, F.M., Maddy, D., Stoneman, R. and Brew, J.S. (1994). A sensitive high resolution record of late Holocene climatic change from a raised bog in northern England. The Holocene, 4, 198-205.

Blackford, J.J. and Chambers, F.M. (1993). Determining the degree of peat decomposition for peat-based palaeoclimatic studies. International Peat Journal, 5, 7-24.

Boygle, J.E. (1999). Variability of tephra in lake sediments, Svinavatn, Iceland. Global and Planetary Change, 435, 129-149.

Charman, D.J., Hendon, D. and Packman, S. (1999). Multiproxy surface wetness records from replicate cores on an ombrotrophic mire: Implications for Holocene palaeoclimate records. Journal of Quaternary Science, 14, 451-463.

Charman, D.J., Hendon, D. and Woodland, W. (2000). The Identification of Testate Amoebae (Protozoa: Rhizopoda) in Peats. Quaternary Research Association Technical Guide 9. Quaternary Research Association, London. 147pp.


Charman, D.J., Blundell, A., Chiverrell, R.C., Hendon, D. and Langdon, P.G. (2006). Compilation of non-annually resolved Holocene proxy climate records: stacked Holocene peatland palaeo-water table reconstructions from northern Britain. Quaternary Science Reviews, 25, 336-350.

Dugmore, A.J. (1989). Icelandic volcanic ash in Scotland. Scottish Geographical Magazine, 105, 168–172.

Dugmore, A.J., Newton, A.J., Edwards, K.E., Larsen, G., Blackford, J.J. and Cook, G.T. (1996). Long distance marker horizons from small-scale eruptions: British tephra deposits from the AD 1510 eruption of Hekla, Iceland. Journal of Quaternary Science, 11, 511–516.

Galloway, J.M., Sweet, A.R., Pugh, A., Schröder-Adams, C.J., Swindles, G.T., Haggart, J.W. and Embry, A.F. (2012). Correlating middle Cretaceous palynological records from the Canadian High Arctic based on sections from the Sverdrup Basin and the Eclipse Trough. Palynology, 36, 277-302.

Hendon, D., Charman, D.J. and Kent, M. (2001). Palaeohydrological records derived from testate amoebae analysis from peatlands in northern England: Within-site variability, between-site comparability and palaeoclimatic implications. The Holocene, 11, 127-148.

Hunt, J.B. and Hill, P.G. (1993). Tephra geochemistry: a discussion of some persistent analytical problems. The Holocene, 3, 271–278.

Kerr, T., Swindles, G.T. and Plunkett, G. (2009). Making hay while the sun shines? Socio-economic change, cereal production and climatic deterioration in early Medieval Ireland. Journal of Archaeological Science, 36, 2868-2874.

Mauquoy, D., Engelkes, T., Groot, MHM., Markesteijn, F., Oudejans, MG., van Der Plicht, J. and Van Geel, B. (2002). High-resolution records of late Holocene climate change and carbon accumulation in two north-west European ombrotrophic peat bogs. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, 186, 275-310.

Morris, P., Belyea, L.R. and Baird, A.J. (2011). Ecohydrological feedbacks in peatland development: a theoretical modelling study. Journal of Ecology, 99, 1190-1201.

Patterson, R.T., Roe, H.M., Swindles, G.T. (2012). Development of an Arcellacean (testate lobose amoebae) based transfer function for sedimentary phosphorous in lakes. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, 348-349, 32-44.

Patterson, R.T. Swindles, G.T. and Kumar, A. (2011). Dinoflagellate cyst-based reconstructions of mid to late Holocene winter sea-surface temperature and productivity from an anoxic fjord in the NE Pacific Ocean. Quaternary International, 235, 13-25.

Payne, R. and Gehrels, M.J. (2010). The formation of tephra layers in peatlands: an experimental approach. Catena, 81, 12–23.


Payne, R.J., Telford, R.J., Blackford, J.J., Blundell, A., Booth, R.K., Charman, D.J., Lamentowicz, Ł., Lamentowicz, M., Mitchell, E.A.D., Potts, G., Swindles, G.T., Warner, B.G. and Woodland, W. (2012). Testing peatland testate amoeba transfer functions: Appropriate methods for clustered training-sets. The Holocene, 22, 819-825.

Pilcher, J.R., Hall, V.A. and McCormac, F.G. (1995). Dates of Holocene Icelandic volcanic-eruptions from tephra layers in Irish peats. The Holocene, 5, 103–110.

Qin, Y., Schucheng, X., Swindles, G.T., Gu, Y., Zhou, X. (2008). Pentagonia zhangduensis nov. spec., (Lobosea, Arcellinida), a new freshwater species from China. European Journal of Protistology, 44, 287-290.

Qin, Y., Xie, S., Smith, H.G., Swindles, G.T. and Gu, Y. 2011. Diversity, distribution and biogeography of testate amoebae in China: Implications for ecological studies in Asia. European Journal of Protistology, 47, 1-9.

Rea, H.A., Swindles, G.T. and Roe, H.M. (2012). The Hekla 1947 tephra in the North of Ireland: distribution, concentration and geochemistry. Journal of Quaternary Science, 27, 425-431.

Roe, H.M., Gehrels, W.R. and Charman, D.J. (2002). The preservation of testate amoebae in Holocene coastal deposits in the UK: applications for studies of sea-level change. Journal of Quaternary Science, 17, 411-429.

Roe, H.M., Patterson, R.T. and Swindles, G.T. (2010). Controls on the contemporary distribution of lake thecamoebians (testate amoebae) within the Greater Toronto Area and their potential as water quality indicators. Journal of Paleolimnology, 43, 955-975.

Swindles, G.T., Blaauw, M., Blundell, A. and Turner, T.E. (2012). Examining the uncertainties in a ‘tuned and stacked’ peatland water table reconstruction. Quaternary International, 268, 58-64.

Swindles, G.T., Blundell, A. Roe, H.M. and Hall, V.A. (2010). A 4500-year proxy climate record from peatlands in the North of Ireland: the identification of widespread summer ‘drought phases’? Quaternary Science Reviews, 29, 1577-1589.

Swindles, G.T., Charman, D.J., Roe, H.M. and Sansum, P.A. (2009). Environmental controls on peatland testate amoebae (Protozoa: Rhizopoda) in the North of Ireland: Implications for Holocene palaeoclimate studies. Journal of Paleolimnology, 42, 123-140.

Swindles, G.T., Lawson, I.T., Savov, I.P., Connor, C.B. and Plunkett, G. (2011). A 7000-yr perspective on volcanic ash clouds affecting Northern Europe. Geology, 39, 887-890.

Swindles, G.T., Morris, P.J., Baird, A.J., Blaauw, M. and Plunkett, G. (2012). Ecohydrological feedbacks confound peat-based climate reconstructions. Geophysical Research Letters, 39, L11401.


Swindles, G.T., Patterson, R.T., Roe, H.M. and Galloway, J.M. (2012). Evaluating periodicities in peat-based climate proxy records. Quaternary Science Reviews, 41, 94-103.

Swindles, G.T. and Plunkett, G. (2010). Testing the palaeoclimatic significance of the Northern Irish bog oak record. The Holocene, 20, 155-159.

Swindles, G.T., Plunkett, G. and Roe, H.M. (2007a). A multi-proxy climate record from a raised bog in County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland: a critical examination of the link between bog surface wetness and solar variability. Journal of Quaternary Science, 22, 667-679.

Swindles, G.T., Plunkett, G. and Roe, H.M. (2007b). A delayed climatic response to solar forcing at 2800 cal. BP: multi-proxy evidence from three Irish peatlands. The Holocene, 17, 177-182.

Swindles, G.T., Plunkett, G. and Hall, V.A. (2008). Late Quaternary tephrochronology of the North of Ireland. In: Whitehouse, N.J., Roe, H.M., McCarron, S. and Knight, J. (eds.) North of Ireland: Field Guide. Quaternary Research Association. London, 41-45.

Swindles, G.T. and Roe, H.M. (2007). Examining the dissolution characteristics of testate amoebae (Protozoa: Rhizopoda) in low pH conditions: Implications for peatland palaeoclimate studies. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, 252, 486–496.

Swindles, G.T. and ~32 others. (in prep-a). Climate change in Ireland over the last 5,000 years: a review.

Swindles, G.T. and ~12 others. (in prep-b). ‘False’ tephra layers in Holocene peats linked to anthropogenic activity.

Turner, T.E. and Swindles, G.T. (2012). Ecology of testate amoebae in moorland with a complex fire history: implications for ecosystem monitoring and sustainable land management. Protist, 163, 844-855.

Turner, T.E., Swindles, G.T., Charman, D.J. and Blundell, A. (in press) Comparing regional and supra-regional transfer functions for palaeohydrological reconstruction from Holocene peatlands. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology. doi: 10.1016/j.palaeo.2012.11.005

Wheeler, J., Swindles, G.T. and Gearey, B.R. (2010). Finding Bosworth Battlefield: A multiproxy palaeoenvironmental investigation of lowland sediments from Dadlington, Leicestershire, England. Journal of Archaeological Science, 37, 1579-1589.

Woodland, W.A., Charman, D.J., Sims, P.C. (1998). Quantitative estimates of water tables and soil moisture in Holocene peatlands from testate amoebae. The Holocene, 8, 261-273.


HONORARY MEMBERSHonorary Membership of the QRA is bestowed on individuals who have given distinguished and career-long service to Quaternary science and/or effective contributions to the activities and development of the QRA itself, and who are on the cusp of professional retirement or who have recently retired. I am delighted to announce that we are awarding honorary memberships in 2012 to three individuals from very different constituencies of the QRA; the one thing they have in common is their names – they are all called Jo(h)n!

John Gordon

J o h n G o r d o n h a s worked in Quaternary geoconservation for 35 years, representing a strong voice for conservation, management and access to Quaternary sites and landscapes. John began his career at the University of Aberdeen graduating with an MA in Geography and a PhD in glacial geomorphology. He went on to do postdoctoral research there on the geomorphology of South Georgia and the South Shetland Islands, and then spent two years teaching in the Geography Department at St Andrews University. He took on his first policy role as Assistant Head of the Geological Conservation Review Unit in the Nature Conservancy Council (NCC) in 1978, and became Head of the Geomorphology and Quaternary Branch in 1986. With the breakup of the NCC in the early 1990s, John moved back north to join Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH) in Edinburgh, where he remained until his retirement in 2012, latterly as Policy & Advice Manager: Earth Science. Here he was principally responsible for development, management and delivery of Earth science inputs to core areas of SNH work, including policy support, guidance on development planning casework, site condition monitoring, climate change, ecosystem services, soil conservation, the Scottish Biodiversity Strategy, marine conservation and promoting awareness and engaging the voluntary sector. John’s work in developing a practical and evidence-based approach to


conservation has ensured the protection of key geological sites, and contributed to the sustainable management of rivers, coasts and soils.

During the past 35 years John also developed an international reputation in his field, and is the author of over 90 peer reviewed articles in journals, conference proceedings and books, an exceptional rate of productivity for someone whose main role has been outside of academia. His work has covered a wide range of topics in geoconservation and geodiversity, science policy and public awareness, glacial geomorphology in Arctic and sub-Antarctic areas, and Quaternary history, landscape evolution and climate change. John’s publications include those aimed at a technical audience as well as a significant number of popular articles and books. John co-ordinated the Geological Conservation Review (GCR) for Quaternary and geomorphology sites in Great Britain, and was instrumental in the assessment, selection and documentation of the approximately 800 sites that this covered. This programme provided the scientific basis for the subsequent Earth Science Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) designations in England, Scotland and Wales. John was lead author and editor of the GCR Quaternary of Scotland volume. John’s recent key achievements include developing the evidence base and framework for Scotland’s Geodiversity Charter in 2012; designing the geodiversity guidelines for Marine Protected Areas in Scotland; undertaking the soil conservation groundwork that led to the Scottish Soil Framework; and promoting the need for soil conservation in the UK as Chair of the Joint Nature Conservation Committee’s Soils Lead Co-ordination Network.

John has also made a significant contribution to raising wider public awareness of Scotland’s geoheritage, and its wider values to society, through public lectures and popular and schools publications. Through this work, John has inspired others from many different disciplines to engage with their geoheritage and actively participate in geoconservation, both as professionals and volunteers. Besides all of this, John has remained an active QRA member, attending his first field meeting in Aberdeen in 1975 and later serving as a Treasurer on the Executive Committee and contributing to a number of meetings and field guides, including the Quaternary of the Cairngorms, and the Quaternary of Shetland. Retirement sees him taking up an Honorary Professorship at the University of St Andrews but most importantly for us, returning to the QRA Executive Committee as a very qualified QRA Conservation Officer! For all his past, present and future contributions to Quaternary science and conservation, the QRA is delighted to award John Gordon Honorary Membership.


Professor John Lowe

John Lowe needs little introduction. He is one of the best known Quaternary scientists in the world. The reasons for this are many: the excellence of his research, but also the enormous contributions he has made to Quaternary science education, and his work on a variety of national and international Quaternary organisations and initiatives. John’s career showed promise of things to come when he graduated from University of St Andrews having been awarded the Royal Scottish Geographical Society Medal along with his First Class MA in Geography. He continued through his PhD at Edinburgh before taking up his first academic post at City of London Polytechnic where he became Professor and Head of Geography, and then Royal Holloway University of London. He became the UK’s first Chair of Quaternary Science in 1992 and took on a variety of roles at RHUL including that of Dean of Science, and he is now the Gordon Manley Chair of Geography.

John’s research has covered a wide range of topics in Quaternary geology and global environmental change. His early work on the Lateglacial and Holocene vegetation and glacial history of Scotland is well known, and developed his long-standing interest in chronologies and high-precision dating methods. John recognised that improved chronologies were particularly crucial for understanding abrupt climate change in the glacial-interglacial transition and, kick-started by a Leverhulme Trust grant in 2000, this work led to his world-leading role in tephrochronology, culminating in coordination of the current NERC RESET Consortium Project (RESET: RESponse of humans to abrupt Environmental Transitions). John’s scientific achievements are simply immense: over 135 refereed papers, innumerable other publications and constant stimulus of the science through tireless contribution to meetings and workshops.

It is difficult to do full justice to John’s long list of achievements and initiatives in Quaternary science. One of the many ‘firsts’ that has had a major and lasting impacts was his co-founding of the MSc in Quaternary Studies at City of London Polytechnic and Polytechnic of North London in 1978. He took this to RHUL as the MSc in Quaternary Science in 1992 and there must now be hundreds of Quaternary scientists who began their careers with John and his colleagues on this degree. He supervised 78 Masters projects between 1978 and 2012, supervised 24 PhD students and mentored 15 post-doctoral researchers.


Whilst he influenced all of these individuals directly, his educational impact is perhaps even greater through his co-authorship of the textbook Reconstructing Quaternary Environments (Lowe, JJ and Walker, MJC, Addison-Wesley-Longman) published in 1984 with a second edition in 1997 and a much-awaited third edition coming soon. There must be thousands of students in geography and earth sciences courses around the world for whom this has been a Quaternary bible in their undergraduate and postgraduate degrees.

John has given much to research and education in Quaternary science, but he has also contributed immeasurably to broader activities of Quaternary science organisations and activities. For the QRA, he laid the foundations of financial success and stability by establishing the Journal of Quaternary Science, now a major international journal which provides the financial underpinning for all of our grants, meetings sponsorship and outreach activities. He has served on the QRA Executive Committee as a member, Vice President and President, as well as editing four QRA field guides, serving as Special Issue Editor for Journal of Quaternary Science, and contributing to many other QRA meetings. In INQUA, he was co-ordinator of the INTIMATE project, President of the Palaeoclimate Commission, INQUA Vice-President and now Senior Vice President. He has also been very active in representing Quaternary science in RCUK, having chaired and served on more than 20 NERC committees and boards, most notably as a past chairman of the NERC Earth Science Grants Committee, and currently as chair of the Cosmogenic Isotope Analysis Facility Steering Committee and member of the BOSCORF (NOCS core repository) Steering Committee.

To conclude, many others have recognised John’s contributions (he holds the Royal Geographical Society’s Victoria Medal, the Geological Society’s Coke Medal, and the University of Helsinki Medal for contributions to earth science), but I do not think any of these awards can be as warmly bestowed as that of QRA Honorary Membership. The QRA is delighted to make this award to John in recognition and gratitude for past and continuing contributions to Quaternary science and the QRA.


Jon Merritt

Jon grew up in Hertfordshire where he explored gravel pits in the Vale of St Albans, becoming fascinated about the age and origin of the deposits being dug there. His interest took him to the University of Reading, where his Geology degree included just six lectures on Quaternary geology, all dealing with the Dutch stratigraphy! He chose ‘gravel’ as a subject for his dissertation, and although his tutor, JRL Allen, was expecting a more rigorous, mathematical approach, the resulting investigation into the aggregates industry dictated his career. It helped Jon get a job in the Minerals Assessment Unit of the Institute of Geological Sciences in London, supervising drilling rigs in East Anglia. He explored most of the sand and gravel pits in the region, eventually discovering an extraordinary sequence at Bures. After many hours of enthusiastic sampling, photography and description he discovered that Jim Rose and Peter Allen had been there already and were writing it up. Jon joined the QRA at about this time, attending his first field excursion to Oxford, which was memorable not only for the quantity of port and ‘After Eight’ mints that were consumed in the Baden Powell Museum!

In 1976 Jon helped set up a sand and gravel resource appraisal team in Edinburgh and eventually succeeded his mentor, Douglas Peacock, as a Quaternary mapping geologist in the hallowed Highlands and Islands Unit of BGS. A dream had come true! His first assignment was the resurvey of the Fortrose sheet, where he walked in the footsteps of John Horne, who had actually done a remarkably good job back in the nineteenth century. His discovery of new interglacial sites at Dalcharn and Allt Odhar inspired him to run the Beauly-to-Nairn QRA field meeting in 1990 with his fellow researchers. Other meetings followed to the Banffshire Coast and Buchan (2000) and the Central Grampian Highlands (2004). He also contributed to the QRA field guides for Islay and Jura, Western Highland Boundary and Solway Lowlands and Pennine Escarpment. In one memorable moment, his boss asked him whether he worked for the BGS or the QRA! In the 1990s Jon became heavily involved in the Quaternary site


investigations and hydrogeological modelling work commissioned by NIREX in western Cumbria. Latterly, he continued mapping work, but much of his effort in BGS was of more corporate and national significance, including a new lithostratigraphical framework for the Quaternary in Britain. In the meantime Jon’s lifetime attachment to sand and gravel led him to the beaches of the Western Isles, Coll and Tiree, and three field mapping seasons in the desert of Abu Dhabi, accompanied by his wife, Jo.

The results of drilling and site investigation projects convinced Jon that many published ‘Drift’ maps could be much improved. He subsequently instigated a residential Quaternary mapping course for his ‘hard rock’ colleagues and postgraduate students and this soon became an annual highlight of Jon’s career. Jon’s mapping appears on 15 published 1:50,000 superficial sheets, notably for Fortrose and north-east Scotland. He has published widely with his colleagues, co-authored five BGS ‘Landscape fashioned by geology’ booklets covering the Highlands and Islands, and wrote the Quaternary chapter for the new BGS Northern England Regional Geology book. Jon retired from BGS in 2012, but he retains a desk in Edinburgh as an Honorary Research Associate. Freed from his official duties he now plans to continue his research, mainly in the Spey Valley, western Cumbria and Northern Ireland. The QRA is extremely pleased to make Jon an Honorary member for his contributions to British Quaternary geology and the life of the QRA.


REVIEW ARTICLE

LATE PLEISTOCENE GLACIATION IN SOUTHERN AFRICA

Stephanie C. Mills

Abstract

At present, south of the volcanoes of East Africa there are no glaciers present in Africa. However, researchers have suggested that glaciers may have existed during the Pleistocene in the mountain regions of the Western Cape, Eastern Cape and Lesotho Highlands. Many of the ‘glacial’ landforms identified in these regions remain controversial and alternative hypotheses concerning their process origin have been proposed. Recent work from the Lesotho Highlands proposes marginal glaciation at high elevations (>3000 m a.s.l.) based on the identification of moraines, glacier reconstruction and mass balance modelling. The glaciers that occupied several sites would have been very small and comparable in size to small cirque glaciers found during the Younger Dryas in the Brecon Beacons and Snowdonia. Small glaciers are very sensitive to changes in temperature and precipitation and the identification of these in southern Africa has important palaeoclimatic implications concerning changes in the timing of precipitation during the last glacial cycle.

Introduction

Past glaciation in southern Africa has long been controversial, with authors presenting evidence for, or arguing against evidence of former glaciation for over five decades. A host of publications advocates for Quaternary glaciation in southern Africa (e.g. (Sparrow, 1967; Sparrow, 1967; Marker and Whittington, 1971; Harper, 1969; Dyer and Marker, 1979; Borchert and Sänger, 1981; Sänger, 1988; Hanvey and Lewis, 1991; Marker, 1991; Hall, 1994; Grab, 1996; Lewis and Illgner, 2001; Mills and Grab, 2005; Lewis, 2008; Mills et al., 2009; Mills et al., 2009; Mills et al., 2012); however, much of the earlier work has been criticised, with suggestions that the evidence may have been misinterpreted (Boelhouwers and Meiklejohn, 2002; Hall, 2004; Osmaston and Harrison, 2005). The main argument negating glaciation of the southern African highlands has been the suggestion that precipitation would have been insufficient to initiate and support mountain glaciation (Boelhouwers and Meiklejohn, 2002; Hall, 2004), due to the suggestion that conditions during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) were more arid and precipitation in the high altitude regions was ~70% of contemporary values (Partridge et al., 1999).


Over 30 years ago, Butzer (1973) suggested that, in southern Africa, too many interpretations based on periglacial and glacial processes had been founded on high latitude preconceptions. This in turn led to vague and sometimes erroneous identification of features and processes. Twenty years later this problem still existed, which led Hall (1992) to call for greater rigour in southern African cold climate studies. However, a further ten years on, Boelhouwers and Meiklejohn (2002: 53) reiterated that “considerable effort is required to improve the status and scientific image of high altitude southern African geomorphology”. This paper presents a review of the evidence for past glaciation during the Late Pleistocene in southern Africa, along with more recent published work, which has used a multi method approach to identify potential glacial landforms and derive past palaeoclimatic conditions at the time of their formation.

There is an absence of evidence for repeated glaciation in southern Africa and any evidence for past glaciation has been assumed to have occurred during the last glacial cycle (with sporadic dating to support this assumption). Coldest terrestrial temperatures during the last glacial cycle inferred from combined pollen data for southern Africa are believed to have occurred at ~ 24 and ~17 ka (Scott et al., 2012). The mountains of southern Africa reach substantial elevations and there is widespread evidence of extensive periglacial activity in the past. This evidence has however previously been used as an argument against glaciation, due to the need for substantial frost penetration and the absence of the insulating effects of snow (Boelhouwers and Meiklejohn, 2002). Three specific locations will be covered in this paper, with glacial evidence presented for the Western Cape, Eastern Cape and Lesotho Highlands (Figure 1). These three locations experience different climatic regimes, which have

Figure 1. Map of southern Africa showing the areas discussed (1 = Western Cape mountains, 2 = Eastern Cape mountains, 3 = Lesotho Highlands).


important implications for the timing and seasonality of precipitation in southern Africa (Figure. 2).

Figure 2. Mean annual precipitation over southern Africa and the position of the rainfall zones (after Chase and Meadows, 2007). WRZ = Winter rainfall zone, SRZ = summer rainfall zone. Rainfall data obtained from WorldClim (Hijmans et al., 2009) (adapted from Mills et al., 2012).

The Western Cape

The Western Cape Highlands reach an altitude of 2249 m a.s.l. at Matroosberg and work dating back to the early 1980s suggested that this region has been subjected to glaciation during the Pleistocene (Borchert and Sänger, 1981; Sänger, 1988). Present day summit mean annual air temperatures are between ~7 and 10ºC, with frost occurring on ~74 days of the year and snow ~31 days per annum (Boelhouwers, 1998). The climate in the Western Cape is distinctly different to the Eastern Cape and Lesotho Highlands, as it receives the majority of its precipitation during the winter months (Figure 2). Annual precipitation ranges from 900 mm to well over 2000 mm per annum (Boelhouwers and Meiklejohn, 2002). It has been suggested that the Western Cape mountains were characterised by plateau ice-fields, valley and cirque glaciers during the Pleistocene (Borchert and Sänger, 1981; Sänger, 1988). Evidence for this was presented in the form of cirques, moraines, glacial polishing and outwash fans, based on morphological analysis (Borchert and Sänger, 1981; Sänger, 1988). Clasts within moraines lack striations; however, this was attributed to the nature of the material in which striations would not typically be preserved (Sänger, 1988).


The occurrence of glaciation in the Western Cape mountains has however been challenged and it has been suggested that the moraines that had been described are erosional remnants of bedrock and that the proposed cirques owe their origin to structural controls rather than presenting evidence for an ice body. In addition, the suggested outwash fans may represent sub-aerial conditions during seasonal snowmelt (Boelhouwers and Meiklejohn, 2002). To this end, past glaciation in the Western Cape still remains highly controversial. In order for glaciation to have occurred in the Western Cape mountains, significant climatic changes would have been necessary and a temperature drop of 10ºC, along with wetter conditions as a result of a northward shift in the westerlies was proposed (Sänger, 1988). Work by Boelhouwers (1999) on openwork block deposits in the region however suggests a more conservative temperature depression of 7-8ºC during the LGM, with limited snow cover to allow for deep frost penetration, thus suggesting that localised glaciation would be unlikely.

The Eastern Cape

The Eastern Cape mountains reach a maximum elevation of 3001 m.a.s.l. at Ben Macdhui and active periglacial processes occur above 1800 m a.s.l. (Grab et al., 2012). Mean annual air temperatures are 7.5ºC at 2800 m a.s.l. (Kück and Lewis, 2002) and frost occurs on ~63 days per annum. Pleistocene glaciation has also been suggested for the Eastern Cape mountains, with evidence proposed for valley glaciers and much smaller cirque glaciers (Lewis, 2008). Two main sites have been identified as having the clearest evidence for past glaciation at Killmore (-30.941677S, 27.942349E) and Mount Enterprise (-31.176095S, 27.979789E) (Figure 3). At Killmore a 1.5 km ridge (Figure 3A) was originally described as a pronival rampart (Lewis, 1994), but was subsequently re-interpreted as a moraine, due to the distance between the ridge crest and backwall being larger than what was proposed for pronival ramparts (Ballantyne and Benn, 1994; Lewis, 2008). This moraine occurs at altitudes between 2040 and 2000 m a.s.l. and sits on a bench. This landform remains

Figure 3. The Killmore rampart (A) and the Mount Enterprise moraine (B).


undated and more recent work suggests that it may be structural in origin, due to the presence of the bench and that its morphology reflects fluvial erosion (Hedding and Nel, 2010).

Detailed sedimentological work has been undertaken in the Eastern Cape on a landform complex believed to be moraine (Figure 3B) (Lewis and Illgner, 2001). Three ridges ~300 m in length and up to 5 m in height have been interpreted as moraines, being formed by a glacier up to 50 m thick. A glacier reconstruction was undertaken and the equilibrium line altitude (ELA) of the glacier was calculated to be ~2100 m a.s.l. and it has been suggested that the glacier owed its origin to a substantial amount of snow accumulation through snowblow (Lewis and Illgner, 2001). Although none of the deposits have been dated directly, (Lewis, 2008) suggests that these are most likely LGM or late glacial in age due to the pronounced nature of the landforms. Climatic reconstructions based on the occurrence of a glacier at this altitude suggest that temperatures would have needed to have been at least 10 - 17ºC colder than present (Lewis and Illgner, 2001), which is not reflected in other proxy climate data for southern Africa. Temperatures derived from dissolved gas records from aquifers (Heaton et al., 1986), speleothem δ18O (Talma and Vogel, 1992; Holmgren et al., 2003) and pollen records (Scott, 1999), indicate a mean annual temperature decrease of 5-7°C at the LGM over southern Africa. Dating of the deposits and an in depth analysis of the landforms has been undertaken by Mills and Barrows (in prep), which aims to give a more coherent picture of past environmental conditions in this region.

Lesotho Highlands

The area where the most extensive research relating to past glaciation has been undertaken is in the Lesotho Highlands. The highest peak reaches an altitude of 3482 m a.s.l. at Thabana Ntlenyana (Figure 4) and this region currently undergoes seasonal periglacial activity. Mean annual air temperature for the highest peaks is ~4ºC (Grab, 1999) and frost days occur on ~180 days per annum. Snowfalls occur on average 8 days per annum. This region differs from the Western Cape in terms of the timing of precipitation, which falls primarily during the summer months. Cirque shaped hollows led to the first suggestion for Quaternary glaciation in southern Africa (Sparrow, 1967; Sparrow, 1967; Harper, 1969; Marker and Whittington, 1971). High resolution sequences obtained from bogs within the hollows suggest that these were excavated during the last glacial cycle (Marker, 1994; Marker, 1995). 577 hollows have been identified in the Lesotho Highlands; however, 75% of these occur on north-facing slopes, which are warmer and therefore less likely to preserve snow and ice (Mulder and Grab, 2002). There is also a distinct lack of field evidence from these ‘cirques’, as no glacial erosional or depositional features have been identified, thus further questioning the origin of these hollows


(Grab, 1996). It has been suggested that, rather than presenting evidence for glacial erosion, these hollows may owe their origin to both lithological and climatic factors (Grab and Hall, 1996). Evidence for the origin of steep east-facing riverheads ‘cutbacks’ along the Drakensberg escarpment has also been attributed to glacial erosion (Hall, 1994; Grab and Hall, 1996). Debris ridges emanating from steep, high altitude (>3200 m a.s.l.) south-facing exposures of cutbacks on the eastern flank of the Great Escarpment have been suggested as evidence of localised plateau, niche and cirque glaciation on higher summits during the Late Pleistocene (Hall, 1994; Grab, 1996). A hypothesis of glacial dumping over the escarpment sidewalls to produce the moraine-like ridges has been suggested (Grab, 1996); however, Boelhouwers and Meiklejohn (2002) attribute this to fluvial incision of deposits. They also suggest that the existence of periglacial deposits at similar aspects and equivalent and higher altitudes require a non-glacial environment, thus rejecting the proposal for glaciation in the region.

More recent work has integrated geomorphology, sedimentology, micromorphology, glacier reconstruction and mass balance modelling to determine the origin of slope deposits at high altitude sites in the south-eastern Lesotho Highlands (Mills and Grab, 2005; Mills et al., 2009a, b, 2012) (Figure 4). The linear deposits all occur on south-facing slopes above 3000 m a.s.l. and are up to 300 m in length and 16 m in height (Figure 5). The landforms have been dated to between 14 700 cal. yrs BP and 19 350 cal. yrs BP, placing them within

Figure 4. Location map of the study sites along the Tsatsa-La-Mangaung, Sekhokong and Leqooa mountain ranges.


the timescale of the last glacial cycle. Geomorphological and sedimentological analyses suggest that these deposits are most likely moraines that preserve evidence for both active and passive debris transport (Mills and Grab, 2005; Mills et al., 2009a, b). Micromorphological analysis suggests some evidence for basal transport and a complex depositional history which has undergone substantial post depositional reworking (Mills et al., 2009b). The additional application of glacier reconstruction and mass balance modelling suggests that glaciers could have existed in this region, with mass balance characteristics comparable with modern analogues (Mills et al., 2012). Reconstructed ELAs range from 3095 to 3298 m a.s.l., which is ~1000 m higher in altitude than the ELA proposed by Lewis and Illgner (2001) for the Eastern Cape. These palaeoglaciers would have been very small (e.g. 0.2 km2) (Figure 6) and close to the glaciation threshold. The size of the reconstructed glaciers would have been similar to Younger Dryas glaciers reconstructed in the Brecon Beacons and Snowdonia (Coleman et al., 2009; Bendle and Glasser, 2012). The reconstructed glaciers in the Lesotho Highlands would have been dependant on additional mass in the form of wind blown snow and avalanching, although one site would have had little potential for snowblow (Mills et al., 2012). This reconstructed glacier therefore represents the best indication of regional climatic conditions at the time of its existence. Based on a temperature depression of 6ºC as suggested by proxy data, reconstructed palaeoprecipitation at the ELA (Ohmura et al., 1992) for this palaeoglacier would have been ~1100 ± 200 mm a-1, compared to modern precipitation values of between ~800 mm a-1

(Sene et al., 1998; Nel and Sumner, 2008) and ~940 mm (WorldClim dataset; (Hijmans et al., 2005). This suggests that precipitation may have been 0-60% higher than at present, which is in strong contrast to the proposed increase in aridity during the LGM (Partridge et al., 1999). More recently, however, there is growing support that several regions of southern Africa were wetter during the LGM (Stuut et al., 2004; Chase and Meadows, 2007; Gasse et al., 2008; Brook et al., 2010; Scott et al., 2012).

Evidence for the existence of glaciers in the Lesotho Highlands is not widespread, suggesting that these glaciers owed their existence to local factors such as

Figure 5. The Tsatsa-La-Mangaung (A) and Leqooa (B) moraines.


topographic shading and reduced insolation. All reconstructed glaciers occur on the cooler south-facing slopes, which receive up to 50% less insolation during the winter than their north-facing counterparts (Tyson et al., 1976; Mills, 2006). Solar radiation modelling was undertaken at the reconstructed glacier sites and the results suggest that all sites of palaeoglaciation occur in areas where there would have been reduced melting as a result of topographic shading, which would have played an important role in the augmentation of mass balance (Mills et al., 2012). The relationship between areas of contemporary late-lying snow and sites hosting former glaciers compared to those with relict periglacial landforms has also been investigated (Grab et al., 2009). The spatial distribution of periglacial landforms such as earth hummocks, stone/turf banked lobes, block deposits and sorted patterned ground coincides with areas where snow accumulation is limited, whereas there is a strong spatial association between areas of late-lying snow and moraines (Grab et al., 2009). This suggests that the dominant process during the last glacial cycle would have been periglacial, with only localised glaciation.

Figure 6. An example of one of the reconstructed glaciers along the Leqooa mountain range (adapted from Mills et al., 2012).


Palaeoclimatic implications

The occurrence of glaciation during the Late Pleistocene in southern Africa, even if marginal, has important climatic implications, as major shifts in precipitation patterns are necessary to allow for initiation and survival of glaciers at high altitude sites. Mills et al. (2012) investigated various climatic scenarios and suggested that if temperatures were depressed by 8ºC during the LGM, there would be no need to invoke increased precipitation. However there is a lack of widespread evidence of permafrost below 3450 m a.s.l. (Grab, 2002), suggesting that a 6ºC temperature drop is much more likely and in keeping with other proxy records from the sub-continent. Even with a 6ºC temperature drop, temperatures would have still been above 0ºC during the summer months and precipitation would have fallen onto the glacier surface as rain. In order for glacier initiation and survival, a potential slight increase in atmospheric precipitation is required, but more importantly a shift in the timing of precipitation, from a summer dominated to a spring-winter-autumn dominated regime (Mills et al., 2012).

In order to evaluate this, Mills et al. (2012) applied a high resolution climate model HadAM3h to test whether late glacial climate simulations generate an increase in precipitation during the LGM in southern Africa. The model was run for three time slices (21, 18, 15 ka) and no overall increase in precipitation was detected (Figure 7). This is unsurprising given that climate models are unable to replicate a significant shift in the westerlies (Rojas et al., 2009), which would provide more moisture to the sub-continent. There is however an increase in precipitation during the winter season in the Western Cape region and a clear shift in the timing of precipitation over the summer rainfall region of southern Africa, to more arid conditions during the summer months, suggesting a shift to a more autumn-winter-spring dominated precipitation regime. Evidence for increased winter precipitation during glacial periods was first proposed by van Zinderen Bakker (1967), who argued that winter rains expanded to ~25°S across all of southern Africa. Cockcroft et al. (1987) later suggested that this zone may have expanded to 30°S over the eastern parts of southern Africa. This would mean that the pattern of precipitation in the Drakensberg region during the LGM would have been less seasonally constrained, allowing for more precipitation to fall as snow than at present. Cold fronts occur most frequently in winter at present (Tyson and Preston-Whyte, 2000), whilst an increased frequency of cold fronts during autumn, winter and spring during the last glacial cycle would have produced heavier snowfalls and in turn increased the snow cover at high altitudes (Grab and Simpson, 2000).


Conclusion

The extensive amount of work that has been undertaken in the high mountain regions of southern Africa over the last 5 decades has fuelled speculation concerning whether southern Africa experienced glaciation during the Late Pleistocene. The evidence proposed for the Western Cape region has been rigorously challenged and it seems unlikely that this region experienced glaciation. Despite convincing evidence proposed for the Eastern Cape Drakensberg, the dramatic reduction in temperature needed to initiate glacier growth is extremely unlikely and this remains a major obstacle when invoking glaciation in this region. Further work is necessary in order to corroborate the process origin of the landforms previously described and the likely climatic conditions necessary for their formation. The work undertaken in the high mountain region of Lesotho favours marginal glaciation, with glacier location being highly dependent on local topoclimatic conditions, such as enhanced shading and snowblow. The occurrence of glaciation in this region would advocate a potential slight increase in precipitation, greater cloudiness, and a seasonal shift towards cold-season precipitation, which would have allowed for more precipitation to fall as snow.

Fig ure 7. HadAM3h precipitation anomalies with the pre-industrial showing seasonal and annual means at three time slices (mm/day) (adapted from Mills et al., 2012).


Acknowledgements

Much of this work would have not been possible without the help of several individuals and I would like to thank Professor Stefan Grab, Dr Brice Rea, Dr Simon Carr and Aidan Farrow for their contributions to this research.

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Stephanie C. MillsSchool of Geography, Geology and the Environment

Centre for Earth & Environmental Science Research Kingston University London, Penrhyn Road

Kingston upon Thames, KT1 2EE, [email protected]


ARTICLEDARTMOOR GLACIATION – FACT OR FICTION?

Allan StrawAbstract: This question is prompted by the recent publication of evidence for the existence of a former plateau icefield(s) in northern Dartmoor (Evans et al., 2012). Some of the landforms identified as diagnostic such as moraines, meltwater channels, hummocky ground and ice-eroded features are here reviewed with suggestions of alternative causes, together with comments on tor distribution. The origin of the Slipper Stones landform in the West Okement valley is examined and its value in allowing calculation of a regional ELA in relation to experiments in ice-sheet modelling is questioned. Comparison with postulated Exmoor glaciation is discounted.

For many years the question in the title has not been raised, Dartmoor being generally regarded as a classic periglacial region. This short article is prompted by the recent claim by Evans et al. (2012) that geomorphological features in northern Dartmoor can be regarded as evidence for the former existence of a plateau icefield. This writer, drawing on over 30 years’ familiarity with the area, remains sceptical about this claim, and is concerned that generic terms have been given to features with no or only minimal presentation of field evidence, or any in-depth discussion of alternative origins. This is particularly disturbing when such features are used to infer regional patterns of ice accumulation and flow, glacial limits and tor distribution. A small number of examples will illustrate these points.

1. It has long been appreciated that valley and ridge alignments reveal, over the whole of Dartmoor, a close adjustment to a dense network of faults and master joints which guide minor headstreams and tributaries as well as the major streams. Coupled with this structural control the mineral composition of the granite, far from homogeneous, exerts an equally great influence on differential erosion also at meso- and smaller-scales. Slopes therefore often show undulations being crossed by swells of ground (some with valley-side tors) and linear depressions, valleys widen and narrow, and tors exhibit different forms. When draped by regolith sheets such irregularity of bedrock form can influence regolith thickness, boulder or clast concentration, direction of movement, water throughflow and surface morphology. The latter can also be affected by processes related to phases of incision followed by recession of ‘new’ lower slopes and backwearing upslope of bluffs now marking the front edges of regolith sheets. Bluffs are susceptible to loss of fines between contained boulders which become poorly vegetated, while lower slopes can also suffer from gelifluction, and sapping from seepage and spring activity.


The regolith being highly permeable, heavy rain and snowmelt render these processes effective even today. In earlier, colder, more-sparsely-vegetated times they would have been more intensive. These processes can produce narrow zones of boulders, large and small, or linear, bouldery ridges and stripes lying at various orientations on slopes depending on rates of upslope backwearing of the incision-generated bluffs. What criteria reveal that some of them might be moraines?

2. It could also be such processes that were responsible for the one-off situation of “5 steep relict bedrock channels and a small bouldery ridge” identified by Evans et al. (2012: 40) on the east side of Quinton’s Man spur (SX 623 842). They state that “the only possible explanation is that they represent subglacial meltwater channels and an esker” and go on to postulate their development at a hypothetical suture between ice flow units from north and south, noting changes of flow direction and influence of supraglacial drainage! However, the five gullies indent the frontal edge of a regolith sheet that lies along the foot of the locally steepened east slope of Quinton’s Man spur. Even in present day winters, in many parts of the Moor, snow lies deep and long under such slopes providing meltwater. The gullies may well, therefore, testify to sapping and spring activity along the bluff more as an example of a widespread process on the Moor, than being the product of a one-off inferred event.

3. Among the group of features claimed as glacial are the areas of bouldery hummocks in several of the valley floors. These are not described in detail but are still claimed to be “the product of supraglacial debris mound accumulation” (i.e. ablation moraine). Today, such areas, usually underlain by bouldery regolith off the slopes, are generally well-vegetated, often marshy, but at times after excessively heavy rain and/or snowmelt, streams break up into anastomosing channels around the hummocks. Herein lies one possible cause – in earlier times, after transport of regolith into the valley floor, floodwater channels could have isolated hummocks, perhaps on many occasions, until lower discharges and denser vegetation stabilized the features. Yet again, some of the areas could have been subject to frost-heaving or to the formation, burial and collapse of icings and ice laccoliths under periglacial conditions. Either way, ascription to ablation moraine looks unfounded.

4. Other presumed glacial features are likewise under-described, even though the case for glaciation rests in part on their veracity. What is it that allows some slope features to be regarded as lateral or frontal moraines, others as meltwater channels, drumlins or even an esker? What distinguishes a roche moutonée from a small valley-side tor? What characteristics confirm that the landform (SX 638 815) south of Sittaford Tor is “a well-developed terminal moraine” when, sited immediately on the north side of a sharp bend in the East Dart valley, situation and sediments (Evans et al., 2012: Fig. 14) show it could equally or even more likely, be a terrace fragment? Could drumlins


really have been created on the unpromising slopes south of Sittaford Tor? How are glacially-produced facets on clasts different from those inherited from joint planes?

5. Caution is also lacking with respect to the larger valleys. In Section 4, preceding the descriptive text, Evans et al. (2012) state that “Larger erosional features included overdeepened valleys, displaying the early development stages of U-shaped profiles”. Part of the Tavy valley was illustrated as an example. However, there are no overdeepened valleys in Dartmoor, no reversals of thalweg gradients, no lakes. Most of the regolith-strewn sheets that cover the majority of slopes exhibit gently concave profiles in whole or part and, of course, a glaciated valley does not have to be U-shaped. The term is clearly mis-used, but is applied to portions of main valleys that are relatively narrow and steep-sided, the larger ones being the West Okement and Tavy valleys. The authors’ discussion section (p. 49) begins: “Overdeepened or weakly U-shaped valley segments that fringe the central uplands of North Dartmoor document the passage of glacier ice that advanced beyond the granite massif, but corroborative evidence for such an extensive glaciation has yet to be identified”. Why then claim them as glacially-eroded? Most of the larger streams leave Dartmoor in steepish-sided valleys, including the Avon and Erme in the southern part. The reason seems to lie in the simple fact that the original granite massif had a flattened dome form, its margins in places plunging steeply below the metamorphic aureole. Streams draining from the central parts have, over millions of years, endeavoured to attain graded profiles. So, where they transect the original, convex outer zone of the granite, their valleys will inevitably be deeper. The case of the West Okement valley is, however, special. It is excavated along the largest fault to cross the granite west of the Sticklepath – Bovey fault-zone. The fault trends north-north-west to south-south-east, and is also responsible for much of the alignment of the East Dart valley above Dartmeet. The West Okement stream has taken advantage of disturbance of the granite, and fluvial erosion coupled with mass movements has produced an impressive valley, not requiring the aid of a glacier. The Tavy valley, cited and illustrated by Evans et al. (2012: Fig. 2) as being overdeepened and weakly U-shaped, exhibits joint- or fault-controlled curves, long regolith-strewn sides, steepened outer bends, and a narrow boulder floor, quite different from the West Okement valley but likewise, unlikely ever to have been glaciated.

6. The Slipper Stones feature (SX 563 885) is yet another case in point. In Section 4.1 (Evans et al., 2012) it is briefly described as “an elongate amphitheatre-like hollow”, then immediately claimed to have had a former snow/ice body large enough to constitute a glacier, even though “the morphology of the bedrock hollow does not qualify it even as a Grade 5 cirque...” and it is used for modelling purposes to provide an ELA of c. 460 m. Hence, in their conclusion, “The palaeo-glacier reconstruction with which we have the greatest confidence,


the Slipper Stones niche glacier represents a palaeo-ELA of around c. 460 m OD”. What if the Slipper Stones never had a glacier, being merely a periglacial nivation hollow, or even something else?

As a landform the Slipper Stones comprise, below the uppermost break-of-slope, a remarkably uniform slope of 25° to 35° on largely bare granite extending and indented slightly along about one kilometre of the west side of the West Okement valley with, along its foot, a zone of ridged and partly gullied ground composed of materials obviously sloughed off the slope above. Its north-west end terminates against a small fault. The backslope exposes strongly sheeted granite with joint planes parallel to the surface and therefore inclined north-east toward the valley bottom. Orthogonal joints control division of the sheets into slabs of varying size. The debris zone displays a large number of ridges, nowhere more than a few metres in relief, aligned across the valley-side and bowed slightly away from the steeper backing slope. In at least five places the zone is crossed by gullies draining the foot of this slope. These features are well displayed on the aerial photograph of the Slipper Stones (Evans et al., 2012: Fig. 7a) where a more prominent ridge is arrowed and claimed as morainic. Smaller ridges are discrete and continuous between the gullies, recurring over a distance of some 700 m and appear from the air as ‘wrinkles’ in a skin of superficial material. This detail is given here because of the importance of the Slipper Stones to Evans et al.’s (2012) case for glaciation. The overall form is not that of a cirque, and the small ridges could more likely be related to a large longitudinal snow-patch stretching along the whole one kilometre of the backslope, fed by snow-blow off the high ground to the west, and favoured by its north-east orientation. The surface slope on the snow would be of the order of 20°, and the snow could have been no more than about 20 m thick. However, the form and features of the Slipper Stones can also be interpreted as due at least in part to slope failure along this length of the West Okement valley-side. In other words, a substantial element of mass movement or landsliding has probably taken place in the past, uniquely so because of the particular combination of circumstances at the locality. These are:

1. Excavation by the West Okement stream along a major fault of a relatively narrow valley with steep slopes

2. North-east orientation of the valley-side

3. Sheetings within the granite, which may be ‘unloading’ structures and/or responses to stresses related to the fault towards which they decline.

Given the inevitable presence of snow and its preferential accumulation in colder periods along the backslope, water would readily, often excessively, be available to enlarge and lubricate joints, transport regolith and saturate the debris, leading to gelifluction, to larger-scale slope failure facilitated by the granite’s structures, and to pressurization of the lower rock waste. A short-lived


phase of landsliding within general conditions of nivation could well have been a consequence of overloading of the slope, perhaps even triggered by under-cutting by the river now close to the opposite side, or even by a little tremor along the fault? The status of the Slipper Stones as a glacially-eroded feature remains therefore very much in doubt and its value for regional palaeo-ELA calculation is reduced.

7. Tor types and location are also discussed by Evans et al. (2012) in relation to postulated icefield conditions, but there is no consideration that erosion-resistance variations in the granite might affect tor form and location, no mention of valley-side tors (except when deemed to be roches moutonées) , and seemingly no awareness of the implications of such sweeping statements as “the occurrence of plateau surfaces with no tors, classified as ‘Type 0’ where tors have either never formed or have been removed by repeated glaciation during the Quaternary”. Tors are residuals, and it is not surprising that the highest relief tors occur in the outer zone of the granite pluton where, it has already been noted, lie the more-incised sections of valleys, with steeper, longer slopes. Toward the centre the high broad uplands with low surface gradients provide less opportunity for regolith removal, hence fewer, smaller tors. To claim that some high-relief tors when unhelpfully located, such as those on the Yes Tor upland (SX 580 902), could have been protected by thin, cold-based ice smacks of special pleading.

8. In a wider search for support for the existence of an icefield and its possible date, Evans et al. mention in passing that ice reached the Scillies in the LGM, and refer to the “glaciation of the Punchbowl on Exmoor...” (SS 882 343). They state in their introduction (p. 33) that recent research (Harrison et al., 1998, 2001) “has demonstrated the existence of tills and associated glacial landforms in the vicinity of The Punchbowl, a north-facing valley near the village of Winsford. The tills have been deposited at altitudes down to 255 m asl probably by a glacier snout that flowed into The Punchbowl from a small ice cap located on the summit plateau of Winsford Hill (426 m asl)”. What they fail to state (and omit from the references) is that this claim (rather than a demonstration) by Harrison et al. (1998, 2001) was strongly challenged by the writer (Straw, 2002) who discussed all the relevant features in turn and showed that their evidence was ambiguous at best, and far too tenuous to support the presence of an ice cap on Winsford Hill or for tills to be deposited down-valley of the Punchbowl. The latter is a fine example of a nivation hollow that took advantage of particular geological conditions and may have just about reached a size and form to support a cirque glacier in the next cold phase, the so-called tills are within the range of Exmoor periglacial deposits, and an ice cap on Winsford Hill is pure speculation for which no evidence was presented. The situation on Exmoor provides therefore no support for a glaciation of Dartmoor.


Where then does this leave the question of Dartmoor glaciation? The case for it rests on the interpretation of a variety of landforms as glacially-produced, but because the periglacial legacy is so dominant on the Moor, it is here suggested that individual slope and valley features really should, in the first instance, be shown not to be the product of periglacial processes or of the influences of bedrock structure and composition before claiming a glacial cause. In addition they should also be weighed against the subtle yet real landscape legacies of past tin-working, medieval peat-cutting, and Bronze Age farming. To date this has not been done, and for this writer no convincing evidence for glaciation has yet been put forward. The features claimed as glacial must, ipso facto, be restricted to north Dartmoor. Advocates of glaciation should also demonstrate that this truly is the case.

References

Evans, D.J.A., Harrison, S., Vieli, A. and Anderson, E. (2012). The glaciation of Dartmoor: the southernmost independent Pleistocene ice cap in the British Isles. Quaternary Science Reviews, 45, 31-53.

Harrison, S., Anderson, E. and Passmore, D.G. (1998). A small cirque basin on Exmoor, Somerset. Proceedings of the Geologists’ Association, 109, 149-158.

Harrison, S., Anderson, E. and Passmore, D.G. (2001). Further glacial tills on Exmoor southwest England: implications for small ice cap and valley glaciation. Proceedings of the Geologists’ Association, 112, 1-5.

Straw, A. (2002). Comments on ‘3 articles concerning glacial features’ on Exmoor. Proceedings of the Geologists’ Association, 113, 69-72.

Allan Straw31 Tilmore Gardens

Petersfield, HantsGU32 2JE

[email protected]


REPORT

QRA FIELD MEETING: HOLOCENE TEPHROCHRONOLOGY AND ITS APPLICATIONS IN

SOUTH ICELAND

16th-21st September 2012, Iceland

Introduction

During September 2012, 34 people from the UK, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, Russia, and the USA attended the QRA Field Meeting to Iceland to learn about the Holocene tephrochronology and its applications in Southern Iceland. The meeting was arranged and coordinated by James Scourse (Bangor University) with the field trip being led by Jon Eiriksson, Guðrún Larsen and Esther Ruth Gudmundsdóttir (University of Iceland). The field meeting began on the evening of Sunday 16th September at the Hotel Cabin, Reykjavik with an introductory talk by Jon on Icelandic geology, with a focus on the areas we were going to visit around Southern Iceland. Guðrún then gave an introductory talk on the basic principles of tephrostratigraphy and tephrochronology, followed by an introduction to the Holocene tephrochronology of Iceland that we would be observing over the coming days.

Day 1 Monday 17th September: Large silicic Hekla tephra layers

The first stop of the day was at a viewpoint above the Nesjavellir Geothermal Power Plant 20 km outside Reykjavík where we could observe how the high volcanic activity in the area is harnessed to provide power for Reykjavík. The numerous holes up to 1-2 km in depth that have been drilled into the relatively young rocks and magma intrusions below the plant allow the geothermal heat of up to 380 °C to be utilised to produce steam and power the turbines at the site. We then moved on to visit the sites of the famous Golden Circle tourist route, but with expert guides we gained more of an insight than on the regular tour. At the Thingvellir Plate Margin, the ancient meeting point of the Icelandic Parliament, Jon explained how we observe open fissures in the area up to 40 m deep created by the rifting between the North American and Eurasian plates. The Geysir geothermal area was our next stop where we could observe the Hekla-3 tephra layer underlying silcious sinter deposits produced by the hot springs, thus demonstrating that the activity at the site post-dated this eruption and has been occurring for the past 3000 years. After


witnessing the world famous Strokkur geyser erupting we retired to the Hotel Geysir for a hearty buffet lunch to set us up for the afternoon stops, the first of which was a trip to the impressive Gullfoss Waterfall. Here the river Hvítá has eroded a deep canyon and Jon described how tephrochronology and the silicic tephras produced by Hekla has been used to date periods of erosive activity along the canyon between the Hekla-5 eruption (7100 yr BP) and the Hekla eruption in 1766 AD. Sediment sections at the next stop at a quarry near the farm of Hólakot revealed a suite of prehistoric tephra layers and Guðrún provided a thorough description of the volcanic history of the Hekla volcano with deposits from the Hekla-5 to Hekla-B events exposed (Figure 1). This included the Hekla-Ö layer that was described by Esther, who has recently traced this horizon in marine records North of Iceland. This stop provided the first opportunity for people to reach into rucksacks and retrieve sample bags and a plethora of sampling implements to take away some precious tephra samples, a common occurrence throughout the week! The final stop of the day at the Trjávidarlækur gully brought us more proximal to the source of the Hekla tephra layers, about 15 km from the volcano. Here we could observe large-scale primary and reworked deposits from the Hekla-3 and Hekla-4 eruptions which are up to 4 m thick. Guðrún described how the different deposits were formed and it was possible to observe logs lodged in a peat deposit below the Hekla-4, from which material has been extracted to provide radiocarbon dates for the eruption. We then retired to our accommodation at Hella where a beautiful sunset brought a close to an enlightening day.

Day 2 Tuesday 18th September: Large basaltic tephra deposits from Bárdarbunga-Veidivötn

Day 2 began with tales of the Northern Lights that some participants had been fortunate enough to see the night before. Our first stop was at Stöng, an excavated farmhouse from the settlement period that has been built over with a modern roof to preserve the site. Guðrún explained how the farm had been abandoned after the Hekla 1104 eruption and again after the Hekla 1300 event. Kristjan Ahronson (Bangor University) explained about similar excavations at other sites and about farming and life in the farmhouse during the settlement period in Iceland before we moved outside to view the remains of a smithy and cowsheds. We then moved on, driving along a river bed for a period of time and getting some excellent views of a cloud free Mount Hekla to our second stop of the day to examine a deposit of the basaltic AD ~ 870 Settlement layer (Vatnaöldur tephra) in the bank of the dry valley near the road. Guðrún explained the importance of this tephra layer for dating the first settlers arriving in Iceland and that it is has also been traced to ice cores from the Greenland Ice Sheet. There was then a chance for everyone to get out their trowels and sampling bags for the first time today! We then continued our


drive over barren hyaloclastic formations to the ~1477 AD Veidivötn volcanic fissure. The fissure is about 65 km long and over 10 km3 of basaltic tephra were emitted during the phreatomagmatic phase of the 1477 AB erutption. After a lunch stop in one of the fishing huts at Veidivötn lakes we drove up onto the rim of one of the craters to get a view of all the tephra rings in Veidivötn area. Here Guðrún described what we could observe in the landscape and provided details of the history of the Veidivötn volcanic system. The view was amazing but there was an incredibly cold biting wind at the top of the crater! The bus then retraced our steps and our third main stop of the day was at the Vatnaöldur Innri tephra rings, where we climbed one of the rings in order to see into the crater lake and look at the tephra sections on the inside of the ring and hear about the processes that formed this feature. Our final stop of the day was to Ferjufit, which is flat ground just south of the river Tungná. On the flats there is a network of frost fissure polygons, which are indicative of the first stage of ice-wedge polygons typical of tundra environments. Guðrún dug a pit to show how tephrochronology has been used to date the formation of these frost fissure polygons – in this case that formed during the cold period AD 1550 and 1920. We then returned to our accommodation in Hella, after a couple of photostops for more cloud free views of Hekla.

Figure 1. Tephra section from a Quarry at Hólakot with the Hekla B and Hekla 3 tephra layers marked.


Day 3 Wednesday 19th September: Silicic, intermediate and basaltic tephra, Hekla, Torfajökull, Katla

A cold and frosty, but beautifully sunny, morning greeted the participants on the third day as we jumped on the bus early to head to our first stop on a packed schedule at Sölvahraun. After driving across a lava flow erupted about 1200 years ago we stopped to observe a soil section at which Guðrún described how the AD ~ 870 Settlement layer (Vatnaöldur tephra) was used to date the basaltic flow that originated from a fissure of the Hekla system. We moved on to the site Fjallabaksleid, approximately 17 km NE of the Hekla volcano. Within a river bank section we could observe deposits from the Hekla-X, -Y and –Z events, these all occurred after the Hekla-3 event 3000 years ago during a period of small but frequent explosive eruptions from the Hekla volcano. Material from these three eruptions was carried east and northeast from the volcano and Guðrún described how the tephra layers all have a distinctive appearance with yellow-grey bases overlain by black tops. The next drive took us into the Bárdarbunga-Veidivötn volcanic system to a section at Dómadalur to observe tephra layers from a range of systems including Hekla, Katla, Torfajökull and Grímsvötn. Our lunch stop at Landmannalaugar allowed some of the younger participants a chance to take a dip in the natural geothermal pool. The drive to this stop and beyond took us over a varied landscape, across lava flows from a 2000 year old eruption of Torfajökull and a more recent flow from the Veidivötn volcanic fissure in AD 1477 and provided the chance to observe scoria cones, ring fractures and hyaloclastic ridges. We then stopped at Kirkjufell to observe a pre-Holocene silicic tephra horizon thought to correlate to the Z-2 tephra layer that is widespread within the North Atlantic Ocean. The next drive took us into the Katla volcanic system, down into the Eldgjá chasm, across the river Ófæra and up onto the opposite wall to gain an impressive overview of an 8 km section of this 75 km long feature formed during the 930s AD. Guðrún described the processes that formed the chasm and the features we could observe before we moved on to a section of tephra deposited during the eruption. The drive to our accommodation at Kirkjubæjarklaustur took us over the Skaftáreldahraun lava flow formed during the Laki 1783 AD eruption and brought to an end a long but highly informative day. The day had a perfect ending as there was a spectacular display of the Aurora Borealis that this time the majority of participants got to enjoy.

Day 4 Thursday 20th September: Volcanogenic flood deposits – subglacial silicic and basaltic tephra

Day 4 bought another beautiful day, cold but not a cloud in sky. We headed east towards the Skaftafell National Park, driving along former sea cliffs to our first stop at Skeidarársandur, the largest active outwash plain in the world. Here we had great views of the Skeidarárjökull outlet glacier. We then proceeded


over many bridges toward the Skaftafell National Park; until the building of the bridges in the 1970’s this was the most isolated park of Iceland. We got our first glimpse of the Öræfajökull volcano and to many of the Vatnajökull outlet glaciers. We had a stop at the Skaftafell National Park Visitor centre where there was an interesting display about the effects of various volcanic eruptions on the area, particularly due to jokulhlaups onto Skeidarársandur (Figure 2). The stop was extended whilst our bus driver and Jon changed a tyre which had picked up a puncture on one of the bridges, which was a little ironic given all the off road driving we had done over the last 2 days! We were soon back on the road and stopped at our most easterly destination to examine a deposit of the AD 1362 Öræfajökull tephra near Hnappavellir farm. Guðrún explained more about the eruption which produced a greyish-white rhyolitic tephra layer with a volume of 10 km3 (Figure 3). The eruptions and associated jökulhlaups devastated the area around Öræfajökull which until then had been one of the best agricultural communities in medieval Iceland. This gave everyone their first tephra sampling stop of the day and the now familiar trowels and sample bags soon made an appearance. We then began our journey back west, stopping at Lómagnúpur for an opportunity to sample some ash from the 2011 eruption of Grimsvötn. We continued our drive west to Eldvatn to see the Katla volcano regional stratigraphy. The area is dominated by the black basaltic Katla tephra layers together with several greyish-green silicic Katla tephra layers – including one that was composed of needle like tephra

Figure 2. Field trip participants with the Svínafellsjökull outlet glacier in the background.


shards. Also present are silicic tephra layers from Hekla. We then continued our drive over the Eldgjá lava flow to our final stop of the day at þykkvabæjar Klaustur , the site of an Augustinian Abbey in 1168 and also home to some pseudo-craters. We then departed for our evening accommodation at Drangshíld, stopping in the town of Vik for souvenir shopping and catching glimpses of the Mýrdalsjökull ice cap and Skógafoss waterfall on the way.

After dinner we had an informal presentation and poster session about the work of the delegates relating to tephra. Maxim Portnyagin (GEOMAR, Kiel) described his work on the water content of tephra layers from Hekla. Jaap van der Meer (Queen Mary University of London) discussed some questions relating to tephra studies, such as the age of a tephra layer in Antarctica and how tephra layers can be deposited as undisturbed mm-thick layers in peat bogs and how he has addressed these questions using micromorphology. Siwan Davies, Anna Bourne and Peter Abbott (Swansea University) then outlined the TRACE (Tephra Constraints on Rapid Climate Events) project and recent tephra results from the Greenland ice cores and North Atlantic marine cores. Claudia Mansilla (University of Stirling) described her work in South America and the use of tephrochronology to date her lake sequences. Finally Paul Butler (Bangor University) described work on mollusc shells from the North Icelandic Shelf and using them to provide independent chronologies during the late Holocene and how they may react to volcanic eruptions. After

Figure 3. Tephra deposit from the AD 1362 Öræfajökull tephra near Hnappavellir farm. Guðrún Larsen is in the foreground explaining the site.


the presentations delegates spent some time looking at posters supplied by Eliza Cook (Swansea University), Adam Griggs (Swansea University), Guðrún Larsen (University of Iceland) and Maxim Portnyagin (GEOMAR, Kiel)

Day 5 Friday 21st September: Eyjafjallajökull 2010 tephra and flood deposits

The last day of the excursion brought the first rain, but it did not dampen enthusiasm as we headed off to the first site of the day at the Seljaland archaeological site. At this cave site Kristjan described the occupation of these artificial caves, common in SW Iceland, and highlighted the many crosses carved into the walls and their similarities to ones present in sites in Northern Scotland. The first occupation of this site has been dated using the tephra contours technique to around 870 AD using the Settlement tephra layer. The main stop for the day was at the impressive Gígjökull moraine formed

Figure 4. Terminal moraine of Gígjökull – Our bus for scale.


by an outlet glacier from the Eyjafjallajökull ice cap (Figure 4). Here Jon and Guðrún outlined how the subglacial eruption in 2010 caused floods rich in ash and glacier ice to fill a pre-existing lagoon in front of the glacier, eventually leading to the moraine being breached and the lagoon draining down valley. This stop was followed by a drive down the valley to view deposits related to the Eyjafjallajökull 2010 eruption and collect the final tephra samples of the trip! We finished the field stops just outside Selfoss to view cracks in the earth up to 40 m deep formed during an earthquake in the area during 2008. After five excellent days in the field we returned to Reykjavik to reflect on all that we have seen and learnt.

We would like to thank our three guides Guðrún Larsen, Jón Eiríksson and Esther Ruth Guðmundsdóttir for planning the route, identifying all of the field stops and providing us with their in depth knowledge throughout the week. Many thanks to James Scourse for organising the trip and having the initial idea to arrange a QRA trip to Iceland. Also many thanks to our driver for the week Arni who drove us for miles across rough roads and through many rivers to safely deliver us to all of the stops.

Peter M. Abbott and Anna J. BourneDepartment of Geography

College of ScienceSwansea University

Singleton ParkSwanseaSA2 8PP


QUATERNARY RESEARCH FUND

THE EXTENT OF THE LAST SCOTTISH ICE SHEET: TESTING THE ATLANTIC SHELF MODEL ON ST KILDA

Background and rationale

Recent climate-proxy-driven ice sheet models suggest that the Scottish ice sheet extended all the way to the western Atlantic shelf edge during the Late Devensian (Boulton and Hagdorn, 2006; Hubbard et al., 2009). This view, dubbed ‘the Atlantic Shelf model’, finds support in bathymetric and seismic data from the Hebrides and West Shetland shelves, most notably in the form of a series of offshore moraines (Stoker et al., 1993; Bradwell et al., 2008). However, these data are poorly constrained by dating evidence and there is a possibility that at least some of these shelf break and mid-shelf moraines were formed by an earlier, i.e. pre-LGM, ice sheet.

The best possible candidate for onshore work in this context is the St. Kilda archipelago, which is located c. 65 km W of the Hebrides and c. 40 km E of the shelf edge. The island group must have formed an isolated, topographic high at the time of the LGM, when eustatic sealevel was c. 120 m lower than today. Interestingly, when the stratigraphy of Hirta - the only accessible island of the archipelago - was last studied in the early 1980s, it was suggested by Sutherland et al. (1984) that during the LGM St. Kilda only experienced local, valley glaciation, implying that the last Scottish ice sheet failed to reach St. Kilda, or was too thin (<120 m thick) to leave evidence above present-day sea-level. In either scenario the Atlantic shelf model and the onshore stratigraphic work are incompatible.

According to Sutherland et al. (1984) the restricted LGM glaciation on Hirta is delimited by moraine ridges and represented by the ‘Village Bay Till’, a mainly massive diamicton of local provenance. This facies is underlain by a head deposit, which in turn is underlain by another massive diamicton, the ‘Ruaival Drift’. Based on similarities with the ‘Village Bay Till’ in clast and texture characteristics, this diamicton was also interpreted as a till (Sutherland et al., 1984). This would imply the occurrence of another, earlier (Early Devensian or pre-Devensian?) glacial event.

Sutherland et al.’s (1984) interpretation of the glacial stratigraphy was made entirely in the tradition of that time when tills were routinely described in terms of single depositional processes (for example: melt-out, lodgement). It is now recognised that tills are subglacial hybrid materials and commonly reflect highly complex formational histories (see e.g. Evans et al., 2006). It goes


without saying that this new way of approaching till stratigraphy may lead to significant reinterpretations of key Quaternary sections. The aim of this project was therefore to re-investigate the glacial history of the St Kilda archipelago, armed with state-of-the-art knowledge of tills. The specific objectives of this research were to establish whether the archipelago was over-ridden by the last ice sheet as the Atlantic Shelf model suggests, or whether it was indeed only a valley glacier that affected the islands. An associated cosmogenic exposure dating project, carried out concurrently by Colin Ballantyne and Derek Fabel, looks into the timing and the vertical extent of the suggested glacial overriding, and/or the age of an episode (or episodes) of the suggested local valley glaciation of St Kilda.

Figure 1. Village bay, St Kilda. View to the south-west. Moraine ridge clearly visible towards the bottom part of the slope.

Some preliminary results, significance and further work

Reassessment of the exposed sediments of St Kilda showed that there is evidence for only one convincing till deposit on the island, and that this is confined to the area occupied by a small valley glacier as defined by a clear moraine ridge on the western side (see Figure 1) and a less convincing drift limit (roughly at the same altitude) on the eastern side of Village Bay.

Thick drift deposits in the SW of Village Bay are reinterpreted as periglacial gelifluctate (‘head’) deposits rather than the ‘older’ lower till (Sutherland et al.,


1984). The thickness of the periglacial deposits (thickest hitherto identified in Scotland: Ballantyne, personal communication), may suggest that St Kilda was not over-run by the last Scottish Ice Sheet. However, following this inference we still need to find an explanation for till-like (possibly comminution till) deposits that are exposed stratigraphically below the aforementioned head deposits, as well as the glacially-deposited boulders that were identified at altitudes up to 300 m in both Village Bay and Gleann Mór.

Sutherland et al. (1984) proposed that three glacial events are recorded in the sediments: a pre-Devensian glaciation, followed by an extensive locally-nourished early Devensian glaciation, followed by a more restricted local valley glaciation during the LGM. Based on our stratigraphical considerations, while awaiting the outcome of the cosmogenic dating as carried out by Ballantyne and Fabel, it appears that there are two possible scenarios to explain the sediments and landforms on St Kilda: 1) the last ice sheet over-rode the archipelago during the LGM and the local Village Bay glacier developed during the Loch Lomond Stadial, and 2) an earlier, more extensive ice sheet over-rode the islands, and the local Village Bay glacier developed during the LGM.

Acknowledgements

Thanks are due to the QRA for financial support (to JFH), to Colin and Derek for good company and discussions in the field, and to Susan Bain (The National Trust for Scotland) and John Raven (Historic Scotland) for granted permission to work on the islands.

ReferencesBoulton, G.S. and Hagdorn, M. 2006. Glaciology of the British Isles Ice Sheet during the last glacial cycle: form, flow, streams and lobes. Quaternary Science Reviews 25: 3359-3390.

Bradwell, T., Stoker, M.S., Golledge, N.R., Wilson, C.K., Merritt, J.W., Long, D., Everest, J.D., Hestvik, O.B., Stevenson, A.G., Hubbard, A.L., Finlayson, A.G. and Mathers, H.E. 2008. The northern sector of the last British Ice Sheet: maximum extent and demise. Earth-Science Reviews 88: 207-226.

Evans, D.J.A., Phillips, E.R., Hiemstra, J.F. and Auton, C.A. 2006. Subglacial till: formation, sedimentary characteristics and classification. Earth-Science Reviews 78: 115-176.

Hubbard, A., Bradwell, T., Golledge, N., Hall, A., Patton, H., Sugden, D., Cooper, R. and Stoker, M. 2009. Dynamic cycles, ice streams and their impact on the extent, chronology and deglaciation of the British-Irish ice sheet. Quaternary Science Reviews, 28: 758-776.


Stoker, M.S., Hitchen, K. and Graham, C.C. 1993. The geology of the Hebrides and West Shetland shelves, and adjacent deep-water areas. British Geological Survey United Kingdom Offshore Regional Report. HMSO: London.

Sutherland, D.G., Ballantyne, C.K. and Walker, M.J.C. 1984. Late Quaternary glaciation and environmental change on St Kilda, Scotland, and their palaeoclimatic significance. Boreas 3: 261-272.

John F. Hiemstra and Richard A. ShakesbyCollege of Science (Department of Geography)

Swansea UniversitySingleton Park

Swansea, Wales, UK, SA2 [email protected]


HIGH-PRECISION ULTRA-DISTAL HOLOCENE TEPHROCHRONOLOGY IN NORTH AMERICA


The ecological responses of ombrotrophic peat bogs to variations in bog surface wetness offer potential for improved understanding of how changes in climate drivers may be transmitted to terrestrial ecosystems. The eastern seaboard of North America is particularly plentiful in these climatically sensitive environments, and being proximal to the Gulf Stream, Labrador Current and Gulf of Saint Lawrence is well situated to test hypotheses concerning relationships between terrestrial responses to changes in ocean circulation, glacial meltwater and atmospheric circulation. The PRECIP* project is examining a number of sites in this region in order to link short-lived events associated with such changes (Hughes et al., 2000; Daley et al., 2009). However, realistic correlation is dependent on the size of age model error ranges and agreement levels of proxies used. The high degree of precision afforded by tephrochronology (Alloway et al., 2007; Lowe, 2011) provides a valuable geochronological tool for this task, with cryptotephras (ash particles <100 μm size), in particular, enabling correlations at the ultra-distal scale. Up to 12 cryptotephra isochrons encompassing much of the Holocene are reported from one PRECIP study site at Nordan’s Pond Bog, Newfoundland Island (Figure 1). They derive from

Nordan’sPond

Bog

St John’sSt John’s

100 km

Island ofNewfoundland

Island ofNewfoundland

N

Figure 1. The location of Nordan’s Pond Bog, Newfoundland Island (indicated by star in inset) relative to a number of global volcanic sources (black volcano symbols) with documented Holocene eruptions.


multiple North American sources and demonstrate the potential of the technique as a high-precision geochronological tool which can be applied throughout the continent (Pyne-O’Donnell et al., 2012). Geochemical analytical costs were funded, in part, by a contribution from the Quaternary Research Fund.

Methods

Cryptotephra glass shards were extracted and concentrated from the core sediments by a combination of ashing of the highly organic peats, with heavy liquid flotation (Blockley et al., 2005) of the more minerogenic basal intervals after sieving between 80 and 15 μm. Geochemical characterisation of glass shards was conducted by electron probe microanalysis with wavelength dispersive spectrometry (WDS-EPMA) at the Tephra Analytical Unit, University of Edinburgh.

A number of samples were additionally analysed alongside proximal reference samples at the Electron Microprobe Laboratory, University of Alberta.

Results and Discussion

Up to 12 discrete cryptotephra layers were detected throughout the stratigraphy (Figure 2) (Pyne-O’Donnell et al., 2012). Shards were predominantly of rhyolitic composition, with lesser quantities overlapping the dacitic-trachydacitic ranges. Basaltic-andesite and basaltic shards are also present, but rare. Seven layers were correlated with known eruptions originating from a number of volcanic sources in Alaska (Mount Churchill, Mount Augustine, Aniakchak) and the Cascades (Mount St Helens, Newberry Volcano, Crater Lake). Three layers (545 cm, 230 cm and 160 cm) are particularly prominent in the stratigraphy and are correlated with the Mazama ash, the Aniakchak Tephra and the White River Ash (eastern lobe) respectively. A number of these deposits are the result of climactic caldera-forming or ultra-Plinian eruptions which produced thick visible tephra layers covering large swathes of the west of the continent (Sarna-Wojcicki et al., 1983; Preece et al., 2011). Such high magnitude eruptions, combined with the dominance of westerly winds, should be sufficient to account for only North American tephras being present in Newfoundland from sources up to 7000 km distant, and additionally in the Greenland ice-core stratigraphy (Fiacco et al., 1993; Zdanowicz et al., 1999; Pearce et al., 2004). Conversely, no tephras were present from down-wind Icelandic sources.

The tephrostratigraphy at this site marks the beginning of a high-precision tephrostratigraphical framework throughout North America based on ultra-distal cryptotephra isochrons. Ongoing work should further develop this framework through additional isochron detection and correlation. Such a framework is expected to contribute towards developments within a range of disciplines, especially with regard to palaeoenvironmental and archaeological research.


Rhyolitic shards/5 cm3

Depth

(cm)

0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 450 500 550 600 650 700 750 800 8500

20406080

100120140160180200220240260280300320340360380400420440460480500520540560580600620640660680700720740760780

Age (cal. yr BP)0 1000 2000 3000 4000 5000 6000 7000 8000 9000 10,000

Mount St Helens W set

White River Ash (eastern lobe)

Newberry Pumice

Mount Augustine Unit G

Aniakchak Tephra

East Lake Tephra

Mazama ash

Tephra-derived age curveAge-depth model (from Daley et al., 2009)

Figure 2. The tephrostratigraphy of Nordan’s Pond Bog. Shard concentrations are rhyolitic shards/5 cm3. The radiocarbon age-depth model (grey line) from Daley et al. (2009) is shown with 2σ calibrated error range. The dotted line represents an age curve derived from the published radiocarbon ages or Greenland ice-core ages for tephras found at this site.


AcknowledgementsS.P-O is grateful for funding from the QRA Quaternary Research Fund. Chris Hayward is thanked for help and advice during microprobe work at the Tephrochronology Analytical Unit (TAU), University of Edinburgh. The results reported here were conducted within the NERC PRECIP project (NE/G019851/1, NE/G020272/1, NE/G019673/1 and NE/GO2006X/1) and NERC RAPID project (NE/C509158/1).

ReferencesAlloway, B.V., Larsen, G., Lowe, D.J., Shane, P.A.R. and Westgate, J.A. (2007). Tephrochronology. In: Elias, S.A. (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Quaternary Sciences, Volume 4. Elsevier, London, pp. 2869-2898.Blockley, S.P.E., Pyne-O’Donnell, S.D.F., Lowe, J.J., Matthews, I.P., Stone, A., Pollard, A.M., Turney, C.S.M. and Molyneux, E.G. (2005). A new and less destructive laboratory procedure for the physical separation of distal glass tephra shards from sediments. Quaternary Science Reviews, 24, 1952-1960.Daley, T.J., Street-Perrott, F.A., Loader, N.J., Barber, K.E., Hughes, P.D.M., Fisher, E.H. and Marshall, J.D. (2009). Terrestrial climate signal of the “8200-yr cold event” in the Labrador Sea region. Geology, 37, 831-834.Fiacco, R.J. Jr, Palais, J.M., Germani, M.S., Zielinski, G.A. and Mayewski, P.A. (1993). Characteristics and Possible Source of a 1479 A.D. Volcanic Ash Layer in a Greenland Ice Core. Quaternary Research, 39, 267-273.Hughes, P.D.M., Mauquoy, D., Barber, K.E. and Langdon, P.G. (2000). Mire development pathways and palaeoclimatic records from a full Holocene peat archive at Walton Moss, Cumbria, England. The Holocene, 10, 465-479.Lowe, D.J. (2011). Tephrochronology and its application: A review. Quaternary Geochronology, 6, 107-153.Pearce, N.J.G., Westgate, J.A., Preece, S.J., Eastwood, W.J. and Perkins, W.T. (2004). Identification of Aniakchak (Alaska) tephra in Greenland ice core challenges the 1645 BC date for Minoan eruption of Santorini. Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems, 5, Q03005, doi: 10.1029/2003GC000672.Preece, S.J., Westgate, J.A., Froese, D.G., Pearce, N.J.G. and Perkins, W.T.A. (2011). Catalogue of late Cenozoic tephra beds in the Klondike goldfields and adjacent areas, Yukon. Canadian Journal of Earth Science, 48, 1386-1418.Pyne-O’Donnell, S.D.F., Hughes, P.D.M., Froese, D.G., Jensen, B.J.L., Kuehn, S.C., Mallon, G., Amesbury, M.J., Charman, D.J., Daley, T.J., Loader, N.J., Mauquoy, D., Street-Perrott, F.A. and Woodman-Ralph, J. (2012). High-precision ultra-distal Holocene tephrochronology in North America. Quaternary Science Reviews, 52, 6-11.


Sarna-Wojcicki, A.M., Champion, D.E. and Davis, J.O. (1983). Holocene volcanism in the conterminous United States and the role of silicic volcanic ash layers in correlation of latest-Pleistocene and Holocene deposits. In: Wright, H.E. Jr, (Ed.), Late Quaternary Environments of the United States, v. 2, The Holocene. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis. pp. 52-77.

Zdanowicz, C.M., Zielinski, G.A. and Germani, M.S. (1999). Mount Mazama eruption: Calendrical age verified and atmospheric impact assessed. Geology, 27, 621-624.

*PRECIP (Palaeo REconstructions of ocean-atmosphere Coupling In Peat) is a NERC-funded collaborative research project between the University of Southampton, University of Exeter, Swansea University and the University of Aberdeen (https://ww.southampton.ac.uk/geography/research/projects/holocene_land_ocean_atmosphere_interactions.page?#staff)

Sean D.F. Pyne-O’DonnellGeography Department

Royal Holloway University of London, UKCurrent address: Department of Earth Science

University of Bergen [email protected]

PRECIP members:Matthew J. Amesbury, Robert K. Booth, Dan J. Charman, Tim J. Daley, Paul D.M. Hughes (PI), Neil J. Loader, Gunnar Mallon, Dmitri Mauquoy,

F. Alayne Street-Perrott and Jonathan Woodman-Ralph

Duane G. Froese and Britta J.L. JensenDepartment of Earth & Atmospheric Sciences

University of Alberta Canada

Stephen C. KuehnDepartment of Physical Science

Concord UniversityUSA


FAUNAL DYNAMICS IN THE LATER PLEISTOCENE – INVESTIGATING COMPETITION BETWEEN FOREST

RHINOS AND STEPPE RHINOS

1. Background and rationale

Competition for resources is an important form of interaction between animals, and one that is difficult to assess in faunas from the past. During the late Middle Pleistocene and Late Pleistocene interglacials, two rhinoceros species were present in Northwest and Central Europe. The steppe rhino Stephanorhinus hemitoechus, thought to have been adapted to drier, more continentally influenced habitats, and the forest rhino Stephanorhinus kirchbergensis, adapted to more humid, forested areas (Fortelius et al. 1993), are often found at the same sites. The aim of the research presented here is to compare adaptations of rhino bones and teeth between MIS 7 sites, where both species are present, and MIS 5e sites, when the species had largely non-overlapping distributions, with S. hemitoechus occurring in Western Europe, and S. kirchbergensis in Central Europe. This will clarify whether competition potentially contributed to changes in adaptation (and, by implication, habitat and resource use) in these animals.

Fossils from British MIS 7 and 5e sites, as well as from contemporaneous Central European sites, were studied in the project. Funding through the QRA’s Quaternary Research Fund was used to support data collection in the United Kingdom. For this purpose, the fossil collections of the Geological Survey Museum (Keyworth), Leeds Museum (Leeds), the Natural History Museum (London), Torquay Museum (Torquay), Yorkshire Museum (York) and the collection of Tom Lord (Settle) were visited from late 2011 to the summer of 2012.

2. Results

A total of 508 rhinoceros fossils from British MIS 7 (n=185, Crayford, Ilford and Selsey) and 5e (n= 323, Barrington, Joint Mitnor Cave, Kirkdale Cave, Raygill Fissure, Tornewton Cave and Victoria Cave) sites were studied using conventional morphometrics, geometric morphometrics and mesowear scores. The Last Interglacial sample is dominated by the material from Joint Mitnor Cave (n=194), but remains from other Last Interglacial sites are similar in size and morphology to the Joint Mitnor Cave specimens.

Qualitative and quantitative data analyses confirm that a single species, S. hemitoechus, is present in the Last Interglacial assemblages, while the MIS 7 samples contain both species. On average, S. kirchbergensis specimens are larger than S. hemitoechus specimens, although for many elements some overlap in size is documented. However, when non-metric traits are also included in the analysis, it is normally possible to assign specimens to one of the species.


Mesowear was scored on the upper first and second molars to analyse dietary adaptation following the method of Fortelius and Solounias (2000). The scores are similar between the MIS 5e and MIS 7 S. hemitoechus samples, and there are no clear differences in mesowear scores between the S. hemitoechus samples and the MIS 7 S. kirchbergensis sample. The scores of all three are characteristic of mixed feeders, although the MIS 5e sample falls nearer towards the ‘grazer end’ of the mixed feeder spectrum than the two MIS 7 samples. Minor differences in shape can be observed between the two S. hemitoechus metapodial samples, with the MIS 5e specimens being somewhat more slender than the MIS 7 specimens.

3. Significance

Whilst a full investigation of the question posed in this project requires a comparison of the British material with specimens from contemporaneous sites on the continent, some trends are already apparent from the British samples. With regards to the teeth, it is surprising that the mesowear scores are so similar between the species and the two interglacials (see Hernesniemi et al. 2011). The slight differences indicate the somewhat differing contribution of grazing to the diet. Shape differences observed in the metapodials could relate to climatic differences between the more oceanic MIS 5e interglacial and the more continental MIS 7 interglacial (Ruddiman and McIntyre 1982, Schreve 2001). These shape differences will be further analysed in the context of a larger comparative sample to examine their adaptive consequences. A further issue to be addressed in this project over the next few months is the possible influence of long-term evolutionary trends on the patterns observed (Lacombat 2009). This will be investigated by including older forest and steppe rhino specimens in the analysis.

4. Acknowledgements

I am grateful to the QRA for a grant from the Quaternary Research Fund, which contributed to travel and accommodation costs for data collection. My research is funded primarily through the Marie Curie Actions of the Seventh Framework Programme PERG07-GA-2010-268242) and a Liverpool John Moores University Early Career Researcher Fellowship. Many thanks to the curators of fossil material accessed in this study for allowing me to examine these remains.

ReferencesFortelius, M., Mazza, P. and Sala, B. (1993). Stephanorhinus (Mammalia: Rhinocerotidae) of the western European Pleistocene, with a revision of S. hundsheimensis (Falconer, 1868). Palaeontographia Italica, 80, 63–155.


Fortelius, M. and Solounias, N. (2000). Functional characterization of ungulate molars using the abrasion-attrition wear gradient: a new method for reconstructing paleodiets. American museum novitates, 3301, 1-36.

Hernesniemi, E., Blomstedt, K. and Fortelius, M. (2011). Multi-view stereo three-dimensional reconstruction of lower molars of Recent and Pleistocene rhinoceroses for mesowear analysis. Palaeontologia electronica, 14.2.2T.

Lacombat, F. (2009). Biochronologie et grands mammifères au Pléistocène moyen et supérieure en Europe occidentale: l’apport des Rhinocerotidae (genre Stephanorhinus). Quaternaire, 20, 429-435.

Ruddiman, W.F. and McIntyre, A. (1982). Severity and speed of Northern Hemisphere glaciation pulses: The limiting case? Geological society of America bulletin, 93, 1273-1279.

Schreve, D.C. (2001). Mammalian evidence from Middle Pleistocene fluvial sequences for complex environmental change at the oxygen isotope substage level. Quaternary international, 79, 65-74.

Eline N. van AsperenResearch Centre in Evolutionary Anthropology and Palaeoecology

School of Natural Sciences and PsychologyLiverpool John Moores University

Liverpool L3 [email protected]


QRA-RLAHA AWARD

OPTICAL AGES OF A PLEISTOCENE SEQUENCE IN THE GORDANO VALLEY, NORTH SOMERSET, UK


The aim of this study is to determine a chronological framework for the minerogenic sediments of the Gordano Valley in order to reconstruct the environmental conditions in this region during the Pleistocene epoch. The Gordano Valley (UK National Grid Reference ST 450735) is a funnel-shaped, low-lying valley proximal to the Severn Estuary, discrete from both the Severn Estuary and the North Somerset Levels (Figure 1). The valley lies less than 20 km from the accepted Devensian ice front in South Wales and 4 km north east of Kenn where there is sedimentary evidence for an earlier glaciation (Clark et al., 2004; Campbell et al., 1998; Gilbertson & Hawkins, 1978). A southwest to northeast axial alignment, opposite to that of the Severn Estuary, provides a unique preservation environment that potentially contains an important archive of palaeoenvironmental information reflecting many contrasting Pleistocene environments. Beneath valley floor Holocene deposits of peat and marine alluvium (Hill et al., 2008) lies gravel, sand and clay drift. An AMS 14C date of 45460±790 BP has been returned for freshwater mollusc shells from a coarse sand deposit from a core located in the centre of the valley floor (Figure 1). This date is close to the limit of this technology and luminescence dating enables the chronology of the minerogenic deposits to be confirmed and extended beyond this.

Methods

Six OSL samples were taken from a sediment core extracted in 1 m sections from Weston Moor, (UK grid reference E 44451234; N 73573798). The core comprised a sequence of 2.44 m of sands and gravels overlain by 1.22 m of marl which was in turn overlain by 1.13 m of muds and 2.99 m peat and was located approximately 1 m from the location of the core for which the AMS date was returned for deposits that lie at a depth of between 6.77 and 6.93 m below the peat surface. The stratigraphy of the core, with the units from which samples were taken for OSL dating is shown in Figure 1. Many of the deposits have sharp basal boundaries, suggesting multiple or pulsed erosional/depositional events. Ideally, sampling would not be carried out either close to the ends of core sections or within 30 cm of a stratigraphic boundary. However, most of the sedimentary units are less than 30 cm thick, so a sampling strategy of sampling around the mid-point of the unit was adopted.


Results and significance

The dates from this award (Table 1) have been used in combination with a detailed sedimentological investigation and geomorphological mapping of the valley to investigate the ages of sediment aggradation. Dated evidence for Early Devensian (Oxygen Isotope Stage 5) environmental conditions in South West England is extremely rare. Equivocal evidence of a Devensian age is recorded in the southern Somerset lowlands, where amino acid ratios from contained mollusc faunas indicate a late Stage 5 or Stage 3 age (Campbell et al., 1998; Hunt & Bowen, 2006).

Table 1. OSL ages for the Gordano Valley

Lab # Sample description Altitude (m OD) Age (ka)X3785 Gravel matrix -0.73 91.19 ±16.46X3784 Fine sand -1.15 62.38 ±13.95X3783 Fine sand -1.32 90.51 ±11.69X3782 Fine sand -1.71 88.90 ±9.46X3781 Gravel matrix -2.16 93.51 ±6.94X3780 Fine sand -2.56 90.65 ±13.98

These results have been incorporated into my PhD thesis.

Figure 1. (a) Location of Gordano Valley and setting of study area; box marks location of study area; (b) Detail of study area showing location of core extracted for OSL dating; (c) Stratigraphy of core showing location of samples taken for OSL dating.


Acknowledgements

The ward of funding for OSL dates by the QRA and RLAHA is gratefully acknowledged. Thanks also to Dr Jean-Luc Schwenninger and David Peat at RLAHA for training in sample processing; Avon Wildlife Trust for permission to sample on Weston Moor; colleagues from the Department of Geography and Environmental Management, University of the West of England, for assistance in coring and to my supervisors, Dr David Case, Dr Chris Spencer and Dr Wendy Woodland, for their continued support.

ReferencesCampbell, S., Scourse, J.D., Hunt, C.O., Keen, D.H. and Stephens, N. (1998). Geological Conservation Review: The Quaternary of South West England. Geological Conservation Review Volume 14. Joint Nature Conservation Committee. Chapman and Hall, London.

Clark, C.D., Evans, D.J.A., Khatwa, A., Bradwell, T., Jordan, C.J., Marsh, S.H., Mitchell, W.A. and Bateman, M.D. (2004). Map and GIS database of glacial landforms and features related to the last British Ice Sheet. Boreas, 33, 359- 375.

Gilbertson, D.D. and Hawkins, A.B. (1978). The Pleistocene Succession at Kenn, Somerset. Bulletin of the Geological Survey of Great Britain, No. 66, Institute of Geological Sciences, H.M.S.O., London.

Hill, T.C.B., Woodland, W.A., Spencer, C.D., Marriott, S.B., Case, D.J. and Catt, J.A. (2008). Devensian Late-glacial environmental change in the Gordano Valley, North Somerset, England: a rare archive for southwest Britain. Journal of Palaeolimnology, 40, 431-444.

Jefferies, R.L., Willis, A.J. and Yemm, E.W. (1968). The Late- and Post-glacial history of the Gordano Valley, North Somerset. New Phytologist, 67, 335-348.

Hunt, C.O. and Bowen, D.Q. (2006). Devensian Interstadial marginal-marine deposits at Low Ham. In: Hunt, C. O. and Haslett, S.K. (eds.) The Quaternary of Somerset: Field Guide. Quaternary Research Association, London, 189-195.

Anne BridleFaculty of Environment & Technology

University of the West of EnglandColdharbour LaneBristol, BS16 1QY

[email protected]


NEW RESEARCHERS AWARD SCHEME

THE PATTERN OF ICE SHEET DEGLACIATION AND PALAEOCLIMATIC INFERENCES IN THE CAIRNGORM

MOUNTAINS, SCOTLAND

Background and Rationale

The Cairngorms have a particularly rich record of landforms marking both the retreat of glaciers during Late Devensian Ice Sheet retreat (c.19–15ka BP) and also the Younger Dryas Readvance (c. 12.9–11.7ka BP). Much progress has been made during the 150 years of glacial geomorphological work in the Cairngorms, and the development of dating techniques has enabled former glacier margins to be attributed to climatic events. The pattern, style and timing of ice sheet deglaciation is fairly well understood in the northern Cairngorms; however, much uncertainty surrounds the deglaciation of the southern Cairngorms (Brazier et al. 1996; Kirkbride and Gordon, 2010). In addition, the extent of Younger Dryas glaciation has remained controversial since the work of Sugden (1970) who favoured limited glaciation in only the highest corries, and Sissons (1979) who reconstructed both corrie and valley glaciers. The style of Younger Dryas glaciation, plateau or valley sourced, also remains uncertain and has implications for ELA reconstructions. Accurate glacier reconstructions and palaeoclimatic inferences, combined with a growing number of British palaeoglaciological studies are important in acting as evaluation areas for current numerical models of ice sheet growth and demise (Clark et al. 2012).

Methods

New geomorphological mapping, using high resolution aerial imagery, a high resolution DEM and fieldwork, has been carried out for a 600 km² area in a GIS. All geomorphological landforms have been mapped with a particular focus on those important to glaciological reconstructions. Fieldwork involved using tablet GPS units to confirm mapping interpretations, measuring of shoreline slope angles, ground based photogrammetry for DEM generation, and rock sample collection for cosmogenic surface exposure dating.

Preliminary Results

Preliminary mapping interpretations suggest that, during ice sheet deglaciation, large locally-sourced valley glaciers and plateau-fed outlet glaciers existed in the Cairngorms. These glaciers formed large moraines and meltwater channels in Glen Derry, Glen Quoich, Dubh Ghleann and Glen Dee. There is


also extensive evidence for large ice-dammed lakes existing in the southern Cairngorms (Kirkbride and Gordon, 2010). Lake shorelines at 678 m on the east and west sides of Glen Derry indicate that a lake formed in Glen Derry which drained east via the Poll Bhàt col into a 600 m lake in Glen Quoich, that itself drained east via Gleann an t-Slugain. Our preliminary interpretations agree with those of Kirkbride and Gordon (2010) that the Glen Quoich glacier margins and formation of a delta terrace were synchronous with the existence of these ice-dammed lakes. Evidence for an ice-dammed lake also exists on both sides of lower Glen Dee at 579 m. The lake shoreline cuts across an older moraine thought to be associated with a glacier moving south down Glen Dee, but the shoreline ends at the exit of Glen Geusachan. This may suggest the presence of a glacier in Glen Geusachan either at or after lake formation, during ice sheet deglaciation or during the Younger Dryas readvance. The Dee ice-dammed lake drained over the Meirleach col to the east. This would suggest the lake formed after deglaciation of much of the Cairngorm Mountains, yet ice remained in the main Dee valley to the south of the Cairngorms. This has important climatic implications, suggesting the Cairngorms deglaciated early, most likely due to precipitation starvation. This work forms part of a larger project looking at the ice sheet deglaciation and the extent of the Younger Dryas in the Cairngorm Mountains.

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank the QRA for fieldwork support. Also thanks to Robert Higham for assistance in the field, and the support and advice of my

Figure 1. Location of the sites described in the text. Insert shows the location of the Cairngorm Mountains within the British Isles.


supervisors Dr David Graham and Dr Richard Hodgkins. The author is also grateful to the landowners: Mar Lodge Estate, Invercauld Estate and also SNH for allowing fieldwork to be carried out.

References Brazier, V., Gordon, J.E., Kirkbride, M. P. & Sugden, D.E. (1996). The Late Devensian ice sheet and Glaciers in the Cairngorm Mountains. In: Glasser, N. F. and Bennett, M. R. (Eds.). The Quaternary of the Cairngorms. Quaternary Research Association. London, 28-53.

Clark, C. D., Hughes, A. L. C., Greenwood, S. L., Jordan, C. & Sejrup, H. P. (2012). Pattern and timing of retreat of the last British-Irish Ice Sheet. Quaternary Science Reviews, 44, 112-146.

Kirkbride, V., & Gordon, J. E. (2010). The Geomorphological Heritage of the Cairngorm Mountains. Scottish Natural Heritage Commissioned Report No. 348.

Sissons, J. B. (1979). The Loch Lomond advance in the Cairngorm Mountains. Scottish Geographical Journal, 95(2), 66-82.

Sugden, D.E. (1970). Landforms of deglaciation in the Cairngorm Mountains, Scotland. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 51, 201-219.

Matthew R. StandellDepartment of GeographyLoughborough University

LoughboroughLE11 3TU

[email protected]


EARLY MODERN HUMAN BEHAVIOURAL RESPONSES TO MARGINAL LANDSCAPES: MIDDLE STONE AGE

GEOARCHAEOLOGY IN HIGHLAND LESOTHO

Background and Rationale

The African Middle Stone Age (MSA) contains some of the earliest occurrences of symbolic and technological behaviours which herald fully modern human cognition (e.g. engraved ochre, shell beads) as early as ~70,000 BP in Southern Africa (Jacobs et al., 2008). Such behaviours may have accompanied an increased potential for hominin populations to adapt to a range of habitats, and to ultimately disperse globally (Oppenheimer, 2009). The weight of existing evidence for such behaviours, however, lies in the resource-rich, atypical region of the Cape Coastal ecozone. The presence of MSA industries in the Lesotho Highlands (Carter et al., 1988; Stewart et al., 2012) provides an opportunity to develop models of human responses to environments in montane environments. Current understanding of Quaternary palaeoenvironments in highland Lesotho is, however, limited. Renewed archaeological investigations in and around Sehonghong Rockshelter, Western Drakensberg, by the ‘Adaptations to Marginal Environments in MSA South Africa (AMEMSA)’ project provides the opportunity for a programme of palaeoenvironmental reconstruction to be developed alongside archaeological investigations. This will provide an integrated environmental and cultural history with which to examine human-environment interactions during the MSA, as well as contributing to our understanding of late Pleistocene environments in montane Southern Africa.

A QRA New Researchers Award contributed to the travel costs of the author to take part in an initial geomorphological survey of the Sehonghong valley in August 2011. Specific aims of this fieldwork were:

• to characterise the landforms present within the valley, and their relationship to archaeological material;

• to locate sections of exposed stratigraphy in river-cut sections and erosion gullies (dongas) to sample for absolute dating and palaeoenvironmental investigations.

Results

Sehonghong Rockshelter is located at 1800 m asl in Thaba Tseka district, Eastern Lesotho. The shelter is located at the narrowest part of the Sehonghong valley (c. 50 m), where the Sehonghong river meanders sharply, and was formed within the Clarens sandstone. The survey focussed on the area downstream of the rockshelter towards the confluence of the Sehonghong with the Senqu (Figure 1).


Figure 1. a) Location of Sehonghong rockshelter and the survey area (maps courtesy of B. Stewart). 1b) View of the Sehonghong valley looking west towards the confluence of the Sehonghong and the Senqu (A) and the location of MS1 sediment sequence (B) on the far bank of the Senqu. Sehonghong rockshelter is located 300m to the east of the photo location, in the valley floor. Also visible is the location of RS2 sediment sequence that exposes the valley bottom sediments (C), as are remnant cobble terraces isolated above the active channel and floodplain (D). Photo R. Inglis.

Downstream of the rockshelter the valley widens to ~300m, with the current river channel bordered by heavily-cultivated alluvial terraces. Downcutting into the former floodplain has exposed terrace sediment profiles up to 4 m deep. At profile RS2 (Figure 1b), at the edge of the river channel, ~70cm of well-rounded cobbles are overlain by a ~50cm-thick iron-stained sandy layer, which in turn is overlain by ~3.5 m of pale-orange silty sand containing a number of potential palaeosols. The sandy unit was sampled for OSL dating, and the palaeosols for bulk 14C dating. This alluvial sequence appears to be repeated in other exposures along the valley, and indicates high energy transport (basal, lag gravels) in a potentially braided system, followed by lower-energy deposition in an overbank environment, possibly during the Holocene, although absolute dating is required to constrain these changes in river behaviour. Higher (and therefore potentially older) remnant terraces, containing well-rounded coarse river cobbles and boulders, are isolated on the alluvial plain above the present riverbed (Figure 1b), yet their exact relationship to the lower terraces remains unclear. On the slopes above these terraces, a number of lithic scatters are known from previous archaeological survey work (Carter et al., 1988).


Further downstream, an ~7m deep sediment profile (MS1) is exposed in a deeply incised minor tributary valley on the western bank of the Senqu, opposite its confluence with the Sehonghong (Fig. 1b). The profile, set back from the current main channel, contains silty sand beds, interstratified with darker organic-rich horizons, was interpreted as active colluvial sedimentation (originating from the hillslopes bounding the valley) separated by periods of stability and soil formation. This sequence is truncated at one end by alluvial channel sediments, which appear to document an earlier phase of deposition of the current tributary. These sediments are interdigitated with the main colluvial/palaeosol sequence, indicating a potentially contemporaneous deposition of colluvial/palaeosol and channel sediments, rather than later fluvial incision. The colluvial and palaeosol sediments were sampled for OSL and bulk 14C dating respectively. On the opposite side of the current tributary cut, a ~9m exposure of silty sand sediments, interspersed with palaeosols and thin rounded pebble layers, appears to show floodplain deposition, presumably of the Senqu itself. It is unclear, however, how these two sections relate to each other and both require further investigation and absolute dating.

Significance and Future Research

The survey has allowed the assessment of the landscape immediately surrounding Sehonghong Rockshelter, providing a working, albeit presently undated, geomorphological framework for the valley that will, in future, be linked to archaeological survey and excavation in the valley and rockshelter itself. Whilst the majority of the valley sediments may be relatively recent, some of the deeper sections observed may extend into the Pleistocene. Such deep profiles hold significant potential for the generation of well-dated palaeoenvironmental records through techniques such as stable isotope and phytolith analyses (e.g. Wintle et al., 1995; Parker et al., 2009). As yet, no records of Pleistocene environmental change exist from Lesotho, and such records are desperately needed to place the important cultural records from Sehonghong and other rockshelters in the region within their environmental context. The confirmation of a Pleistocene age for the deposits identified by this survey would therefore provide a major step towards characterising MSA human-environment interactions in Lesotho and the assessment of the role of ‘modern’ behaviours in the ability of human populations to adapt to a range of environments and expand globally.

Acknowledgements

The survey was carried out in collaboration with Dr Mike Morley, Oxford Brookes University, and was supported by the AMEMSA project under the direction of Dr Brian Stewart, Harvard University, and Dr Genevieve Dewar,


University of Toronto. A New Workers Research Award from the QRA, as well as the Dorothy Garrod Memorial Trust at the University of Cambridge funded the author’s participation. Permits to carry out survey around Sehonghong Rockshelter were kindly granted by the Protection and Preservation Commission of the Lesotho Department of Culture to the AMEMSA project. The AMEMSA project is supported by grants from the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge, the British Academy, the Wenner-Gren Foundation and the Prehistoric Society.

ReferencesCarter, P. L. Mitchell, P. J. and Vinnicombe, P. (1988). Sehonghong: Middle and Later Stone Age Industrial Sequence at a Lesotho Rock-shelter. British Archaeological Reports: International Series. 406. Oxford: B.A.R.

Jacobs, Z, Roberts, R. G., Galbraith, R. F., Deacon, H. J., Grün, R., Mackay, A., Mitchell, P., Vogelsang, R., and Wadley, L. (2008). Ages for the Middle Stone Age of Southern Africa: Implications for Human Behavior and Dispersal. Science, 322, 733-735.

Oppenheimer, S. (2009). The great arc of dispersal of modern humans: Africa to Australia. Quaternary International, 202, 2-13.

Parker, A.G., Lee-Thorp, J.A. and Mitchell, P.J., (2011). Late Holocene Neoglacial conditions from the Lesotho highlands, southern Africa: phytolith and stable carbon isotope evidence from the archaeological site of Likoaeng, Proceedings of the Geologists’ Association, 122, 201–211.

Stewart, B. A., Dewar, G. I., Morley, M. W., Inglis, R. H., Wheeler, M., Jacobs, Z. and Roberts. R. G. (2012). Afromontane foragers of the Late Pleistocene: Site formation, chronology and occupational pulsing at Melikane Rockshelter, Lesotho. Quaternary International, 270, 40-60.

Wintle, A. G., Botha, G. A., Li, S.H. and Vogel, J. C. (1995). A chronological framework for colluviation during the last 110kya in Kwazulu Natal. South African Journal of Science. 91(3), 134-139.

Robyn H. Inglis Division of Archaeology

Department of Archaeology and Anthropology University of Cambridge

CambridgeCB2 3DZ, UK

Current email: [email protected]


REVIEWS

NEANDERTHALS AMONG MAMMOTHS. EXCAVATIONS AT LYNFORD QUARRY, NORFOLK

W.A. Boismier, C.B. Gamble and F. Coward (eds). 2012. English Heritage: London. 529pp. ISBN 978-1-84802-063-4

The discovery of mammoth bones alongside flint artefacts in at a quarry at Lynford by John Lord and Nigel Larkin in February 2002 opened a new window on the late Middle Palaeolithic in Britain. Up to that point any understanding of late Neanderthals on the north-western fringe of Eurasia had been based on small, often poorly-excavated remains from a handful of sites together with a scattering of surface finds of bout-coupé handaxes. The much richer sites in France stood in stark contrast to the impoverished British record, where it seemed few Neanderthals bothered to tread. The subsequent excavations at Lynford revealed a wealth of new evidence with a snapshot of Neanderthal survival in a cold, hostile environment on the edge of the known world around 60,000 years ago.

The resulting volume has drawn together the results of the 2002 excavations by Norfolk Landscape Archaeology and the reports from a large range of specialists who were drafted in to contribute to the work. After an introduction by Bill Boismier, the volume is divided into a further five chapters dealing with: stratigraphy and dating; environmental evidence; assemblage formation; and the archaeological assemblages of fauna and lithics. These are followed by the summary of the Lynford Neanderthals.

Chapter 2 starts with a thorough overview of the geomorphological and geological context of the site within the valley of the River Wissey by Simon Lewis. This includes a detailed description of the stratigraphy, in particular the organic-rich channel deposits of ‘Association B’ comprising units bi, bii and biii. It is bii that contains the vast majority of the lithic artefacts and mammoth remains. The human landscape is summarised as a river with a low relief floodplain and abandoned channels, such as that of Association B.

The following sections in this chapter concentrate on Association B, based on the microstratigraphy of 106 contexts recorded by Boismier during excavation. Slight confusion arises here due to the use of different notation schemes for samples, contexts or lab numbers, which are sometimes difficult to relate to the broader stratigraphic scheme established by Lewis. The conclusions from the studies of micromorphology (Charlie French), geochemistry (Julian Andrews)


and compaction studies (Keith Tovey) collectively support the conclusions of Lewis that the deposits reflect an abandoned channel with still or slow-flowing water, subject to bank collapse and bioturbation, particularly in the form of trampling by large mammals. Given this conclusion, the question arises as to whether the micostratigraphy, as represented by the 106 contexts, helps to unravel the understanding of the site, or actually confuses the reader?

The remainder of Chapter 2 is devoted to dating. Radiocarbon dating (Bill Boismier and Tony Stuart) and amino-acid racemisation (Kirsty Penkman and Matthew Collins) unfortunately failed to produce meaningful results. However, OSL dating (Jean-Luc Schwenninger and Eddie Rhodes) provided the most reliable age estimates of between 65ka and 57ka for the channel sediments. This would accord with the beginning of MIS 3.

The environmental evidence (Chapter 3) provides a wealth of data from coleoptera (Russell Coope), molluscs (David Keen), pollen (Frances Green), plant macrofossils (Mike Field) and vertebrates (Tony Stuart). The picture presented is of grassland on a marshy floodplain within a treeless landscape with cool summers and winters perhaps as cold as -15°C. One question posed by the coleoptera was the lack of flesh-eating beetles, leading to the further question of whether the mammoth carcases were already defleshed before reaching their final resting place?

Chapter 4 by Boismier discusses the assemblage formation of both the lithics and vertebrate remains. A variety of slope processes have clearly affected the assemblages and this is further investigated through studies of size-sorting, spatial patterning and refitting. The conclusion reached is that the assemblages have been disturbed through a combination of fluvial and slope processes, bank collapse and trampling. Therefore any clusters in material have been formed post-depositionally, rather than reflecting human behaviour. This study is further supported in a later chapter where Randy Donahue and Adrian Evans use microwear to indicate the types of process that caused the post-depositional alteration to the artefacts. This is becoming somewhat familiar: fluvial and slope processes, bank collapse and trampling.

The archaeological assemblages of animals and lithics are investigated in Chapter 5. This kicks off with the vertebrates by Danielle Schreve with contributions by Don Brothwell, Tony Stuart and Adrian Lister. The section might initially seem misplaced until it is realised that the fauna is dominated by mammoth, which is presumed to be associated with human activity. Other taxa include wolf, bear, hyaena, horse, woolly rhino, reindeer and bison. It is welcome to see a detailed listing in the appendices, although it might be viewed as extravagant when a CD would have saved almost 200 pages of printed tables.

In terms of human intervention, the reindeer and horse provide undoubted evidence of breakage of bones for marrow extraction. If the shed and unshed


reindeer antlers were also humanly accumulated, then they provide important evidence of occupation during late autumn or winter, as well as warmer seasons. Exploitation of the mammoths is less clear. At least 11 individuals are present, but primarily represented by cranial elements and ribs. The under-representation of other post-cranial remains such as limbs is interpreted as being due to differential post-mortem destruction and removal. An unusually high percentage of the bones, particularly ribs, have pathologies which are suggested to have resulted from injuries inflicted by humans. Although the absence of cut-marks from the bones is a little strange, a lack of damage has been noted on elephant bones in modern butchery experiments. Were the mammoths hunted, ambushed or scavenged? The population is dominated by prime adults, which is atypical of a normal matriarchal herd and is suggestive of a targeted population, perhaps of curious young males who may have become mired in the mud. Questions clearly still remain, but this section begins to bring Lynford to life and prepares the ground for the Neanderthals and an understanding of their behaviour at the site.

The lithic assemblages are dealt with by Mark White in a comprehensive review of the 2720 artefacts from the channel. Due to the post-depositional disturbance, they are wisely treated as a single assemblage, although they might represent repeat visits to the site. The fresh condition of the artefacts, high number of chips and occasional refits indicate minimal transport perhaps from a nearby bank. The tools are dominated by handaxes and scrapers which bear affinities with many other late Middle Palaeolithic sites in north-west Europe and include the typical British bout coupé handaxe. Detailed analyses of the assemblage suggests that partially finished handaxes or pre-forms on large flakes were brought to the site with finishing, resharpening and recycling being the primary knapping activities in the area. In the following excellent discussion White paints a picture of flexible Neanderthal behaviour with planning of daily activities and curation of tools. At times they may have been reacting, but ready-prepared, to the cry of carrion birds for the location of new kills, or at other times predicting ambush locations; all this is painted onto the broader canvas of a dynamic landscape. The portrayal is given substance through the thorough discussion of other Neanderthal kill sites across Europe.

The book concludes with an excellent and thought-provoking chapter on Neanderthals by Clive Gamble and Bill Boismier. Were these people Neanderthals? Yes. Were they hunters? Yes. How did they use the land? This question leads to a discussion of the Lynford site catchment. The mix of calcareous grasslands and floodplain habitats would have been seasonally rich feeding grounds for a range of herbivores, also providing seasonal harvests of crowberry and bilberry. A more diverse mosaic of habitats would have been available beyond. But what were their strategies during the ‘seasons of plenty and scarcity’? Summers would have attracted herds of mammoth and bison,


while reindeer migrated south to areas like Lynford during winter, allowing year-round occupation by Neanderthals. More complex questions deal with the socioecology of Neanderthals. In this sense Lynford was not just a mammoth hunting ground, but a resource-rich location for men to secure and protect protein-rich diets to support females and their offspring. The chapters by Schreve, White, Gamble and Boismier all contribute to a colourful picture of Neanderthals living and hunting within a dynamic, seasonally changing environment on the harsh fringes of the known world.

Overall this is a finely presented, well written book that deals with an internationally important site and one that is unique for this period in Britain. The editors should be congratulated on drawing together such a comprehensive study. It contains a wealth of important detail and is beautifully illustrated with many colour plans and photographs. Inevitably, one or two irresolvable questions remain. Where are the flesh-eating beetles? Were the mammoths hunted or scavenged? But, the verdict? A mammoth task well accomplished.

Nick AshtonDepartment of Prehistory & Europe

British MuseumFranks House

56 Orsman RoadLondon N1 5QJ

[email protected]


REBECCA H. JONES, 2011. ROMAN CAMPS IN SCOTLAND. EDINBURGH: SOCIETY OF ANTIQUARIES OF SCOTLAND,

367 PP. (ISBN 978 0903903 50 9, £30)

Roman camps are a remarkable class of archaeological monument. Built to be used by troops on the march, sometimes for a few days or weeks, sometimes only overnight, they survive almost 2000 years later as cropmarks or even as earthworks, testament to the workings of the army of occupation. This comprehensive catalogue of the Scottish camps completes a trilogy which covers Britannia, with catalogues for Wales and England already published (Welfare and Swan, 1995; Davies and Jones, 2006). For the general enthusiast, the same author’s Roman camps in Britain (Jones, 2012) will provide a broader introduction, but the connoisseur and the specialist will need this book on their shelves. Camps have been curiously served by past scholarship: there is an arcane language and a secret geometry, full of references such as the 130-acre series or the Stracathro gate. Jones provides much-needed synthesis and hard-eyed assessment of this material, with some long-cherished groups faring rather badly. Series of camps were beloved of earlier work in the field, as these offered insights into campaigning armies on the march; it is barely an exaggeration to see earlier scholars with maps in one hand and classical texts in the other, matching from one to the other. Jones highlights a major break in the data: north of the Forth-Clyde line, many of the camps do fall into logical series, spaced around a day’s march apart, and can indeed be interpreted in campaigning terms. South of the Forth, this falls apart. Short series can sometimes be identified, or groups with particular functions, such as the construction camps of the Antonine Wall, but the implication is that bodies of troops were regularly moving around southern Scotland in detachments of widely varying sizes, and sufficiently concerned for their wellbeing to require a fortification around their tents. This insight into the realities of occupation is a valuable antidote to previous obsessions with campaigns. Dating remains a major issue, although Jones identifies some broad chronological trends in form; the sequence of camps on river terraces of different dates at Beattock (pp 143-5) provides an elegant demonstration of the value of geomorphological assessment.

A series of short initial chapters review aspects such as historiography and methodology (the very brief chapter 8 on historical context would better have slotted into an earlier chapter), but the meat of the analysis lies in chapter 7, on the field evidence, and chapter 9, reviewing the series of camps. The bulk of the book is the gazetteer, comprising a plan and brief account for each camp, with further references. The view is very much that of an aerial surveyor; excavated data are cross-referenced rather than illustrated. A useful series of figures reproduce all the plans to a common scale, emphasising the diversity


within the record; similar synthesis of other aspects, such as tables summarising dimensions, gate forms, etc, would have been useful. Jones has done an excellent job in collating and standardising this scattered data; future finds and insights are inevitable, but this book will be the mainstay of subsequent study, and brings camps out of nerd’s corner and into the mainstream of scholarship. She identifies the next major leap as coming from large-scale excavation of camp interiors: the oft-quoted work at Kintore in Aberdeenshire (Cook and Dunbar, 2008) emphasises the need to dig big areas of camps and implicitly challenges development-control archaeology to rise to this.

The work touches on broader topics, but at present this corpus lacks the evidence to deal with questions such as the issue of camp followers or effect on the local population, and the discussion rather falters over this lacuna. In places a tighter edit might have made this less obvious; on pages 91-92, for instance, the discussion about the impact of camps on indigenous land use swings from one extreme to the other without coming to a critically-argued conclusion. Production values are generally excellent, although the aerial photographs in the body of the text are over-reduced to about the size of an old-fashioned Polaroid – too small to see the subtle features described in text. The gazetteer format is not always helpful; it can be hard to locate camps from the catalogue entries as there is no indication of county or region, the large-scale maps lack distinguishing features and the small-scale distribution map has no national grid reference points on it. A case could be made for intermediate scale maps of some of the camp-heavy areas to show how the different groups inter-relate. It would be interesting to know what percentage of the word count was spent on illustration credits, as they are all given in full twice, under the image and in the list at the start; by the end, this reviewer could quote the Ordnance Survey licence number (identical for each map) by heart.

This is to quibble over detail, though. The book is the foundation for further work, and will be a classic. Its size places its use in the study rather than the field, but photocopied extracts accompanied this reviewer to several camps and will come to many more, for they are invaluable guides to the field evidence. Roman camps are well-served by this work.

References:Cook, M. and Dunbar, L. (2008). Rituals, roundhouses and Romans: excavations at Kintore, Aberdeenshire 2000-2006. Volume 1: Forest Rd. STAR, Edinburgh.

Davies, J.L. and Jones, R.H. (2006). Roman camps in Wales and the Marches. University of Wales Press, Cardiff.

Jones, R.H. (2012). Roman camps in Britain. Amberley, Stroud.


Welfare, H. and Swan, V. (1995). Roman camps in England: the field archaeology. HMSO, London.

Fraser HunterPrincipal Curator, Iron Age & Roman Collections

Dept of ArchaeologyNational Museums Scotland

Chambers StEdinburgh EH1 1JF

[email protected]


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FEBRUARY 2013 No. 129

ContentsPage

1 EDITORIAL2 ANNOUNCEMENTS5 OBITUARY David F. Mayhew Philip Gibbard10 JAMES CROLL AWARD10 The James Cross Medal14 LEWIS PENNY AWARD14 The Lewis Penny Medal17 Holocene palaeoclimate and peatland stratigraphy of the British Isles

Dr Graeme Swindles25 HONORARY MEMBERS31 REVIEW ARTICLE31 Late Pleistocene glaciation in Southern Africa Stephanie C. Mills46 ARTICLE46 Dartmoor glaciation – fact or fiction? Allan Straw52 REPORT52 QRA Field Meeting: Holocene tephrochronology and its applications in South

Iceland60 QUATERNARY RESEARCH FUND60 The extent of the last Scottish Ice Sheet: testing the Atlantic Shelf model on

St Kilda John F. Hiemstra and Richard A. Shakesby64 High-precision ultra-distal Holocene tephrochronology in North America Sean

D.F. Pyne-O’Donnell and PRECIP members69 Faunal dynamics in the Later Pleistocene – investigating competition between

forest rhinos and steppe rhinos Eline N. van Asperen72 QRA-RLAHA AWARD72 Optical Ages of a Pleistocene sequence in the Gordano Valley, North Somerset,

UK Anne Bridle75 NEW RESEARCHERS AWARD SCHEME75 The pattern of ice sheet deglaciation and palaeoclimatic inferences in the

Cairngorm Mountains, Scotland80 Early modern human behavioural responses to marginal landscapes: Middle

Stone Age geoarchaeology in Highland Lesotho82 REVIEWS82 Neanderthals among mammoths. Excavations at Lynford Quarry, Norfolk.

Nick Ashton86 Roman camps in Scotland Fraser Hunter

ISSN 0 143-2826

Documents

qra.org.ukii . Quaternary Newsletter Vol. 129 February 2013. QUATERNARY NEWSLETTER. EDITOR: Dr Sven Lukas School of Geography, Queen Mary, University of London, Mile End Road, London,