Palaeobotany and Pleistocene Stratigraphy in Britain

Abstract

SUMMARYThe history of the application of palaeobotany to the development of Pleistocene stratigraphy in Britain is reviewed. Problems arising in the interpretation of pollen assemblages are discussed from palaeobotanical and stratigraphical points of view. Problems of correlation and nomenclature are also discussed. HISTORICAL SURVEYClement Reid in his classic work on The Origin of the British Elora (Reid, 1899) observed that 'to the extreme glacialist the "Pleistocene" is equivalent to the "Glacial" Period, and the scattered relics of Interglacial mild epochs are judged to be of small importance'. He added that his work on the history of the British flora might be thought to go to the opposite extreme since he believed that 'the accumulation of ice and snow merely marked two or more culminating epochs in a period when the climate was at least as commonly temperate as Arctic', Clement Reid's studies of macroscopic plant remains from British Pleistocene deposits had led him to classify the plant assemblages as 'pre-glacial', 'early glacial', 'interglacial', 'late glacial' and 'Neolithic', He laid stress on the importance of stratigraphical evidence for the age of his assemblages, with the nature of the assemblage giving the evidence for former climate, Clement Reid's work should be viewed against the background of British Pleistocene studies at that time, well-described by Lamplugh (1906) in his British Association address on 'British Drifts and the Interglacial Problem', Lamplugh noted that James Geikie's (1895) scheme of European glacial and interglacial stages found little or no support in Britain, and that its complexity derived from a too-ready acceptance by James Geikie of the geological consequences of Croll's Astronomical Theory. Lamplugh concluded that 'the British evidence for the Interglacial hypothesis, though requiring further consideration in some districts, is nowhere satisfactory'.At the same time, on the continent, Hartz (1909) in Denmark was establishing the nature of interglacial plant successions through careful stratigraphical work on plant macroscopic remains, and in Germany, Weber (1896a) was also studying interglacial plant remains. Nevertheless, as in Britain, argument on the interglacial hypothesis went on, Hartz (1909) wrote that 'the evidence that the Glacial Period in Europe and North America has been interrupted by one or several interglacial periods increases year by year, and the adherents of "Monoglacialismus", who have become very few in number (though very prolific with the pen) during the last ten years, seem to lose ground more and more'.To a large extent, these discussions on the interglacial hypothesis centred on the definition of the term interglacial. Thus Lamplugh {loc. cit.) regarded the 0028-646X/81/010127+ 11 »()2,00/0

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