The role of cryptotephra in refining the chronology of Late Pleistocene human evolution and cultural change in North Africa

New major element analyses of proximal tephras from the Azores and suggested correlations with cryptotephras in North‐West Europe

“…There is growing evidence that several cryptotephra deposits in NW Europe can be sourced to volcanic regions other than Iceland, and in a recent survey Plunkett and Pilcher () suggested that 24% of all cryptotephra records in NW Europe originate from other regions, including Alaska, the Cascades, Kamchatka, Mexico, the Azores and possibly the Mediterranean. So far, confirmed records of Azorean tephras are restricted to western Ireland (Plunkett and Pilcher, ), but there are cryptotephra records in Wales, Morocco and the GRIP ice core, Greenland, that have tentatively been correlated with volcanic eruptions on the Azores (Barbante et al ., ; Barton et al ., ; Plunkett and Pilcher, ). Several cryptotephra deposits in Ireland have been sourced to the Furnas volcano (Johansson et al ., ), but not yet to specific eruptions, with the exception of the PMG‐5 tephra (Hall and Pilcher, ) that probably represents the distal part of the historical Furnas 1630 eruption.…”

The major and trace element glass compositions of the productive Mediterranean volcanic sources: tools for correlating distal tephra layers in and around Europe

“…We then use this data to define discrimination diagrams that allow the tectonic setting and the source volcano to be determined. These plots are of particular use in the identification of ultra-distal tephra, for example, establishing the source of a cryptotephra found in a cave in Morocco as anorogenic and from the Azores (Barton et al, 2015).…”

The RESET project: constructing a European tephra lattice for refined synchronisation of environmental and archaeological events during the last c. 100 ka

“…RESET also established the presence of distal European tephras, including the Campanian Ignimbrite, in North Africa for the first time, where they are preserved in archaeologically-important cave sequences (Lowe et al, 2012;Douka et al, 2014). Details of the latter discoveries, and of their potential for refining the chronology of stages in human evolution and cultural change in North Africa, are considered in the contribution to this special volume by Barton et al (2015).…”

“…Not all tephra layers occur as discrete, undisturbed layers, for some have clearly been dispersed through the sediments by downward percolation or sediment disturbance, especially in the case of small cryptotephra shards (e.g. Douka et al, 2014; Lane et al, 2014; Barton et al, 2015). If tephra shards have been displaced in the sequence, so too might other materials, such as charcoal fragments and microfossils, which could have implications, for example, in the selection of samples for radiocarbon dating, or interpretation of the results.…”

“…Furthermore, some tephra layers identified during RESET investigations have not yet been adequately characterised or added to the lattice; additional data from these layers may further augment the lattice. For example, a tephra with a geochemical signature that suggests an origin in the Azores was discovered at the Moroccan cave site of Taforalt, while a tephra of probable Anatolian origin was detected in the sediments of the Egyptian cave site of Sodmein (Barton et al, 2015). If traced to specific eruptions of known age, examples such as these would not only provide additional links in the lattice, but could extend the chain of tephra connections to new areas.…”