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Stabilized and active dunes and sand sheet deposits abound in a small lake‐dotted semi‐arid region of the Western Pampean Dunefield, Argentina. Here, a multi‐scale and multi‐proxy study of three sites, across a hydrologic gradient from lakes to a dryland with groundwater levels at more than 25 m depth, analyzes calcareous and ferruginous rhizoliths, calcareous crusts, hypocoatings, pedogenic carbonate and amorphous Mn‐oxide precipitates within blowout dunes. These palustrine‐related features indicate significantly wetter conditions that allowed the development of shallow lakes and expanding wetlands during the Pleistocene–Holocene transition, limited by associated optically stimulated luminescence ages between ca. 14.7 and 11.6 ka. These wetter conditions, also identified in other nearby proxy records, may be associated with a strengthened South American Monsoon System, potentially during the Younger Dryas Chronozone, though other geological, ecological and climatic forcings cannot be ruled out with available data. Such a scenario lacks a modern analogue, since current hydrologic excess, evidenced in the formation of lakes and new rivers, is not observed in the localities which record paleolakes. This study underlines the variable conditions for pronounced hydrologic excess in semi‐arid eolian environments in western Argentina with complex ecological, anthropogenic and climatic linkages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The site of Mwanganda's Village, located along a paleochannel in northern Malawi, is one of only a few sites that have characterized the Middle Stone Age (MSA) of Malawi for decades (Clark & Haynes, ; Clark et al., ; Kaufulu, ). The Malawi Earlier-Middle Stone Age Project has re-examined the site using new mapping and chronometric tools in order to reinterpret the site's significance within the context of current debates surrounding human origins and the potential role the environment played in shaping human behavior. The new data do not support the previous hypothesis that the site was an elephant butchery location (contra Clark & Haynes, ; Clark et al., ; Kaufulu, ). Instead, the evidence shows successive colonization of riparian corridors by MSA hunter-gatherers focused on exploiting localized resources during periods of generally humid climates while other lakes desiccated across Africa. We challenge the hypothesis that stable and intermediately high lake levels within the African Rift Valley System ( sensu Trauth et al., ) catalyzed the evolution of regional interaction networks between 42 and 22 ka. Instead, we interpret the evidence to suggest that regional variants of technology persist into the late MSA as foragers focused on exploiting resources from local catchments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New geoarchaeological and bioarcheological research was undertaken at the open-air site of Mira, which is buried in deposits of the Second Terrace of the Dnepr River, roughly 15 km downstream from the city of Zaporozhye in Ukraine. Previous excavation of the site revealed two occupation layers dating to ∼32,000 cal BP. The lower layer (II/2) yielded bladelets similar to those of the early Gravettian, while the upper layer (I) contained traces of an artificial shelter and hundreds of bones and teeth of horse ( Equus latipes). Mira represents the only firmly dated early Upper Paleolithic (EUP) site in the Dnepr Basin, and occupies a unique topographic setting for the EUP near the center of the broad floodplain of the Dnepr River. The site was visited during a period of floodplain stability, characterized by overbank deposition and weak soil formation under cool climate conditions. Mira was used as a long-term camp, but also was the locus of large-mammal carcass processing associated with a nearby kill of a group of horses (Layer I). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neoglacial and Little Ice Age (LIA) limits occur within 2km of the Inland Ice margin in the Kangerlussuaq area on west Greenland. The LIA limit is clearly demarcated by ice-cored and non-ice-cored moraines, out-wash surfaces and trimlines. Rhizocarpon sp. thalli of ≤16mm on these landforms indicate a 1-2km retreat of the Inland Ice in the past c. 100 years, coincident with peripheral thinning of the ice. An older neoglacial moraine host of Rhizocarpon sp. thalli >40 mm indicates a minimum limiting age of >400 BP, whereas Optically Stimulated Luminescence (OSL) ages on aeolian silt capping the moraine yield close limiting ages of c. 2000 BP. Aeolian silt deposition beyond neoglacial limits yields OSL ages of c. 3000 BP, potentially coeval with advance of the Inland Ice. Aeolian sedimentation and the inferred age of the moraine are coincident with pronounced cooling inferred from palaeolimnological records from west and south Greenland. This neoglacial event at c. 2000 BP is probably of similar extent to the LIA maximum, because of the paucity of preserved moraine remnants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A sediment core from Lake Yarnyshnoe-3 (69°04'N; 36°04'E), an emerged coastal lake from the tundra of the north-central Kola Peninsula, has been analyzed for fossil pollen and diatoms. The pollen record shows the Younger Dryas event marked by increasing Artemisia coupled with decreases in Poaceae, Cyperaceae and Salix at c. 10 700 to 10 000 BP. This core provides the first well-defined palynological record of the Younger Dryas event on the Kola Peninsula. Stomates from Pinus were recovered from the core interval between 8000 and 6000 BP. The stomates, coupled with elevated values of pine pollen, indicate that Pinus sylvestris grew near the arctic coastline of the central Kola Peninsula in the middle Holocene. However, the small number of stomates suggests that pines were not plentiful. The diatom record from the core reflects basin isolation from the sea and indicates additional limnological changes during the climate transition between c. 5000 and 4000 BP. The broadly similar climate and vegetation history on the north-central Kola Peninsula and in Fennoscandia demonstrates the propagation of late glacial and Holocene climate events from the North Atlantic region into the Eurasian Arctic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the results from stratigraphic and geomorphologic investigations in the Poolepynten area, Prins Karls Forland, western Svalbard. Field mapping, soil profile development and [sup 14]C dating reveal the existence of at least two generations of raised beach deposits. Well-developed raised beaches rise to the Late Weichselian marine limit at 36 m a.s.l. Discontinuous pre-Late Weichselian beach deposits rise from the Late Weichselian marine limit to approximately 65 m a.s.l. Expansion of local glaciers in the area during the Late Weichselian is indicated by a till that locally overlies pre-Late Weichselian raised beach deposits. Stratigraphic data from coastal sections reveal two shallow marine units deposited during part of oxygen isotope stage 5. The two shallow marine units are separated by a subglacially deposited till that indicates an ice advance from Prins Karls Forland into the Forlandsundet basin some time during the latter part of stage 5. Discontinuous glaciofluvial deposits and a cobble-boulder lag could relate to a Late Weichselian local glacial advance across the coastal site. Late Weichselian/early Holocene beach deposits cap the sedimentary succession. Palaeotemperature estimates derived from amino acid ratios in subfossil marine molluscs indicate that the area has not been submerged or covered by warm based glacier ice for significant periods of time during the time interval ca. 70 ka to 10 ka. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent observations on postglacial emergence and past glacier extent for one of the least accessible areas in the Arctic, northern Novaya Zemlya are here united. The postglacial marine limit formed 5 to 6 ka is registered on the east and west coasts of the north island at 10 ± 1 and 18 ± 2 m aht, respectively. This modest and late isostatic response along with deglacial ages of >9.2 ka on adjacent marine cores from the northern Barents Sea indicate either early (>13 ka) deglaciation or modest ice sheet loading (<1500 m thick ice sheet) of Novaya Zemlya. Older and higher (up to 50 m aht) raised beaches were identified beneath a discontinuous glacial drift. Shells from the drift and underlying sublittoral sediments yield minimum limiting [sup 14]C ages of 26 to 30 ka on an earlier deglacial event(s). The only moraines identified are within 4 km of present glacier margins and reflect at least three neoglacial advances in the past 2.4 ka. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explored the relationship between high-Arctic fiford depositional environments and the natural thermoluminescence (TL) signal of sediments. The energy and duration of light exposure during transportation and deposition controls the TL level of silicate mineral grains in the sediment. The TL signal of sediments rapidly decreases within c. 0.5 km of a glacier sediment source. The highest TL levels are from tills and ice-proximal glacial-marine sediments, which receive little or no light exposure during transportation and deposition. Intermediate and consistent TL levels are recorded for ice-distal glacial-marine muds, c. 0.5-5.0 km from the glacier front, reflecting slower sedimentation rates. The lowest TL levels are for littoral and sublittoral sediments which receive extended light exposure with shoaling. The granulometry of the sediments is fairly homogeneous and is not diagnostic of a sedimentary environment with most samples dominated by silt and clay; littoral and ice-proximal samples exhibit peak abundances in sand. These results suggest that the relative TL signal of sediments is sensitive to a depositional environment, particularly for environments proximal (within 0.5 km) to a glacier terminus and in shallow water, less than 15 m deep. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 1978 Kaysville, Utah, trench excavated by Swan and others (1980) across a large graben of the Weber segment of the Wasatch fault zone was reexcavated in 1988 to reevaluate the timing and nature of Holocene faulting. Relogging of the trench reveals evidence for five or six faulting events younger than the Provo phase of Lake Bonneville (circa 13,000 14C years B.P.). Geometric reconstruction of net vertical offset in the last three events suggests a variation in coseismic vertical displacement at this site, ranging from a net of 1.4-3.4 m per event. The three latest faulting events occurred at shortly before 0.6-0.8 ka, 2.8 ± 0.7 ka, and circa 3.8-7.9 ka. Earlier events cannot be directly dated because older graben-fill sediments yielded thermoluminescence ages older than the time of deposition, and some scarp-derived colluvial wedges beneath the trench floor were not exposed. The two younger faulting events we recognize at Kaysville correlate reasonably well with faulting events on the same segment 25 km north near East Ogden, Utah, at circa 0.8-1.2 ka and 2.5-3.0 ka (Forman and others, 1991), whereas the earlier Kaysville event is significantly older than the earliest (3.5-4.0 ka) event dated at East Ogden. The 3.5-4.0 ka ground rupture recognized at East Ogden may have died out at a subsegment boundary between the two trench sites within the 61-km-long Weber segment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Field research on Phippsøya, the largest island in the Sjuøyane archipelago, defines the course and timing of postglacial emergence, documents past-glacier movements, and reinterprets deglacial sedimentary sequences. Previously described tills were not identified in sections exposed along the northeast shore of Phippsøya, but instead sublittoral sediments with rock-fall concentrations derived from the adjacent slope. A glacio-isostatically higher sea level >40 ka deposited sublittoral sediment and is possibly correlative to a deglacial event in oxygen isotope stage 4 or 5 identified at other sites on Svalbard. The postglacial marine limit is 22 ± 1 m aht and occurs as an escarpment or washing limit into a stony drift. This drift contains granite and quartzite erratics from Nordaustlandet that indicate coverage by a northward flowing ice sheet during the Late Weichselian. Datable material on the raised-beach sequence was rare and a [sup 14] C age of c. 9.2 ka on an articulated Balanus balanus from 10 m aht provides a minimum constraining age on the marine limit. A mild transgression occurred by 6.2 ka, with sea level falling close to present levels by c. 5.0 ka. The zone of zero emergence (hinge line) lies 10 to 20 km north of Sjuøyane and is approximately coincident with the last glacial maximum limit on the continental shelf. There is an approximately 75 to 100 km offset between observed and modelled zone of zero emergence, indicating a need to refine earth rheology-based ice-sheet models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]