Journal of Quaternary Science最新文献

This study investigates long-term impacts of empires on local socio-ecosystems in western Anatolia (modern western Türkiye) over the past four millennia. We focus on Buldan Yayla Lake, located in a small mountain basin north of the Büyük Menderes (Great Meander) River valley. By examining palynological data alongside historical and archaeological records, we show how four major empires—Hittite, Roman, Byzantine, and Ottoman—shaped land use, vegetation, and resource management practices in a specific locality within a wider regional and transregional economic network. The ebb and flow of empire resulted in cycles of land use intensification and rewilding, resembling broader patterns of regional integration and fragmentation. The different administrative and economic structures of each empire, however, left distinct ecological imprints, with evidence of shifts from extensive pastoralism to specialised crop cultivation, or from olive-focused agriculture to one dominated by mixed agriculture. These shifts underscore both the variation and the adaptability of local socio-ecological systems within broader imperial networks and highlight the interplay of transregional and local factors in landscape transformation.

Radiocarbon dating of bones is essential for reconstructing timelines of species' occurrences, domestication, extinction, migrations, and interactions with Quaternary environments. Many studies compile these chronologies at continental to global scales by aggregating radiocarbon dates from various sources, often balancing data quantity and quality. A major challenge, however, is the frequent lack of reported bone-collagen pretreatment protocols, which directly affect dating accuracy. Without this information, radiocarbon dates cannot be reliably quality-ranked, and retrieving unpublished pretreatment details is often difficult due to lost data, outdated contacts, or restricted access to records. Researchers should ensure that pretreatments are replicable in their publications; and dated materials, taxonomic identities, geolocation details and genetic sequences are linked to individual radiocarbon dates. Journals should mandate the inclusion of reproducible radiocarbon chemistry and liaise with reviewers or advisory board members with expertise in chronological methods for studies presenting new dates or compilations of published dates. Radiocarbon facilities can enhance accessibility and transparency by publishing pretreatment protocols, documenting their history and digitizing older data. We advocate for the creation of a global radiocarbon database, emphasizing the need for close collaboration among the scientific community, dating facilities, research institutions and universities, as well as the adequate allocation of resources to generate and curate reliable radiocarbon data. The scientific community should recognize that current limitations in collagen purification compromise dating accuracy and might significantly affect critical research on Quaternary chronologies, megafaunal extinctions and human evolutionary history.

The site of Loreto (Venosa Basin, Italy) was first discovered in 1929 and subsequently excavated during the latter half of the 20th century. The excavation revealed three archaeo-palaeontological levels, with the lowermost level (Level A) yielding the largest number of remains. Despite the site's notable fossil record, which underscores its importance within the framework of the early Middle Pleistocene, extant research on the site's substantial mammalian fauna has hitherto been confined to a modest number of palaeontological descriptions. The present study constitutes the first taphonomic research of the faunal remains recovered from Level A of Loreto. The anatomical and taxonomic diversity is low, with a marked predominance of cervids. However, the sample appears to be biased by the almost complete absence of small fragments and the high proportion of identifiable remains. The influence of water on the osteological assemblage is minimal, thereby ruling out a fluvial origin of the accumulation. Moreover, anthropogenic and carnivore activity is limited, suggesting that these predators did not significantly contribute to the formation of the assemblages as accumulating agents. It is hypothesised that carnivores and hominins acted in independent events on different carcasses, with little or no interaction among them, as part of the foraging and resource acquisition activities developed in the region. The comparison of these data with those presented for the nearby site of Notarchirico facilitates an understanding of hominin behaviour in the Venosa Basin during the early Middle Pleistocene.

North American arvicoline rodents have long been considered to have high biogeographic, biochronologic, and paleoecological value. They provide relative dating of faunal assemblages when absolute dating is not possible and contribute to paleobiome characterization. However, the scientific value of Arvicolinae is often limited by the level of taxonomic identification achievable by morphological analyses. ZooMS (zooarchaeology by mass spectrometry) is a proteomic method that permits taxonomic identification of bone material. We added 19 North American arvicoline species to the ZooMS reference database to assess the level of taxonomic resolution between those species using ZooMS. Results show species-level taxonomic resolution for all tested arvicolines that diverged up to just under 1 mya. We estimate species-level taxonomic resolution is achievable for arvicolines that diverged up to 273 kya and up to 170.5 kya for members of Microtus. Application to arvicoline fossils demonstrates the presence of previously unidentified species of Microtus in the Great Basin, that isolated molars are sufficient for taxonomic identification, and provides results consistent with the morphological hypothesis that Microtus paroperarius and Alexandromys oeconomus are not conspecific. ZooMS can drastically improve taxonomic identification of arvicolines, and may increase their utility for biochronological, biogeographic, and paleoecological interpretations of Pleistocene faunal response to climatic and other environmental changes.

A depression in the Jurassic bedrock at Wing, Rutland (eastern England), is infilled by deposits spanning the Late Wolstonian (=Late Saalian) to Early Devensian (=Early Weichselian) substages, including the most complete Ipswichian Stage (=Eemian Stage; ~Marine Isotope Stage 5e) sequence known in Britain. This sequence forms an enclosed pocket, the origin of which remains imprecisely determined. Re-examination of its morphometry, infill and setting of the basin, implies it originated as a feature or gull formed by valley-side cambering or associated landslide mass movement process of the Northampton Sand over clay bedrock. The surface glacial diamicton surrounding the hollow, collapsed into the void created, followed 880 years later by a water ponding related to rising groundwater level. By comparison to the annually laminated lake sequence at Bispingen, north Germany, the total time represented over 10 000 years. Through the temperate period, the depression developed into a raised bog and latterly a second ponded-water phase, the hollow finally being filled by inwashed soil and slope material with passage into the subsequent cold stage. The Wing sequence is proposed as the basal boundary stratotype of the British Devensian Stage at 5.67 m below the ground surface.

Mediterranean mountainous areas and their valuable natural resources have long been attractive to human societies. The Peloponnese (southern Greece), with its complex topographic and climatic variability, has been the scenery for the development of numerous human communities. The existing paleovegetation records from the region derive mainly from lowland sites, while the vegetation succession of the mountains is not clearly understood. Herein, we focus on the sediment profile of Rakita, a wetland located in an isolated mountain basin in the northwestern Peloponnese. We combine pollen-based vegetation reconstruction with detailed historical and archeological data and analyze them within a broader well-connected region of the Peloponnese, characterized by an extensive coastline and central location in the Mediterranean trade system. In particular, we contextualize the pollen data with the detailed taxation registers, cadastres, and censuses produced by the Ottoman and Venetian authorities, which recorded agricultural production and population. The high-resolution pollen profile covers the last 1100 years, and thus we are able to look at more than a millennium of socioeconomic change that witnessed a variety of political and economic systems that controlled the Rakita upland area. We are able to study how these different systems impacted the area of Rakita, which has sizable environmental potential for human exploitation, yet is not easily accessible, and therefore not the first choice for human actors whose goal was to maximize agricultural production of the region. We discover that a smaller scale non-imperial but deeply market-oriented political system of the late medieval period, such as the Principality of Achaea, was more successful in intensifying land use even in such isolated locations as Rakita than the large imperial systems of the Byzantine or Ottoman empires, even during their most intensive phases of growth.

Numerous cryptotephra layers originating from Icelandic volcanoes and further afield have reached Northern Europe during the Holocene. Refining the precise timing and the relative frequency of local and distal eruptions requires well-resolved continuous sediment archives. Lake Nautajärvi is located in central-southern Finland (61°48′ N, 24°41′ E), and contains a continuous sequence of 9898 varves. Nautajärvi was isolated from the Baltic Sea basin at the Lake Ancylus phase ~9600 varve yr BP. We present a tephrostratigraphic record of Nautajärvi for targeted intervals within the Holocene, aiming to identify tephra from the largest eruptions, to enable an alignment with other varved lakes in Northern Europe containing tephra layers, like Diss Mere, Tiefer See and Meerfelder Maar. Geochemical analyses were produced for 26 peaks in tephra concentration, with five cryptotephra deposits corresponding to known eruptions from the mid and late Holocene. The far-travelled KS₂ eruption from Ksudach caldera in Kamchatka is identified, enabling an alignment to Greenland, which is strengthened by the identification of the Hekla 4 tephra in Nautajärvi. Close to the KS₂ deposition in Nautajärvi, a Hekla-type eruption correlating to the Lairg A/Hekla 5 is also identified—macroscale counting of the varves between the KS₂ and Lairg A layers enables a constrained age estimate (7001 ± 44 Cal yr BP) of the Lairg A eruption to be made. The widespread Glen Garry tephra was also identified within the Nautajärvi sequence, with an age estimate of 2088 ± 21 varve yr BP. Finally, there is also a tentative correlation to the Suduroy tephra, with an older age estimate than from the sites in which it was originally identified (8459 ± 84 varve yr BP). The remaining layers correspond to eruptions from more distal sources—several chemistries may correlate to mid-Holocene eruptions from North America (Mount Rainier, Aniakchak, Katmai), with one shard tentatively associated with Azorean chemistry. This record provides well-constrained age estimates for two key Holocene tephras (Glen Garry, Lairg A) and highlights the potential for far-travelled tephras from North America and Kamchatka to reach Northern Europe, emphasising the benefits of further tephra studies in Scandinavia.

The physical, sedimentological, mineralogical, and elemental geochemical properties of sediment cores collected in Smith Bay (22BC and 01PC), and near the front of Mittie Glacier (23BC and 01GC), were used to reconstruct glacial sediment discharge and trace the long-term composition and provenance of detrital sediments for the northeastern part of Manson Icefield, southeast Ellesmere Island, over the last 9.2 cal ka BP. The mineralogical and geochemical signatures of core 01GC support the hypothesis of the gradual opening of Nares Strait between 8.8 and 8.2 cal ka BP and suggest a progressive retreat of glaciers surrounding Smith Bay. Lower sedimentation rates (<14 cm ka⁻¹) recorded in core 01GC during the Middle Holocene, combined with the presence of coarse-grained sediments, indicate a landward retreat of Mittie Glacier and sea-ice free conditions during summer in Smith Bay from 5.4 to 3 cal ka BP. During the Late Holocene, the deposition of six coarse-grained layers close to Mittie Glacier seems to have been triggered by subglacial lake discharges upstream of its western arm. The only known surge of Mittie Glacier, recorded between 1992 and 2007, is identified in the core 23BC by a marked increase in coarse-grained sediment input.