View article

A monolith of peat taken from an upland blanket mire at Talla Moss, southern Scotland, was sub jected to peat humification and pollen analyses to produce both a proxy-climate record and a vegetational history covering the last 5500 years. While the peat showed little visible stratigraphy, with no intimation of major peat humification changes, colorimetric data indicate a markedly oscillatory climate record, which is apparently largely independent of, or out of phase with, major vegetational changes. The raw data imply particular wet shifts in climate at c. 3455 BP, c. 2600 BP, c. 1930 BP, c. 1095 BP, with a markedly wet (or cool and wet) episode commencing at c. 540 BP. (These are central age estimates, and should not be regarded as precise dates for the inferred climate shifts.) Other wet shifts apparently date from c. 3070 BP, c. 2265 BP and c. 1700 BP, although the first of these corresponds with pollen evidence for …