Quaternary Geography and the Human Past - A Companion to Environmental Geography - page 202

dispersal across Europe, have generated much debate (Stringer and Gamble, 1993).
A key area of controversy is the interpretation of radiocarbon dates because many
of these cultural changes took place towards the practical upper limit of this dating
method (Mellars, 2006).
To explore some of the problems involved in charting the interactions between
environmental change and human activity over the course of the last cold stage, this
chapter will focus upon examples from Western Europe and the Mediterranean
within the period between c. 50,000 and 10,000 years ago. We now know that this
period includes Heinrich Events 1 to 5 when massive discharges of icebergs from
the Laurentide Ice Sheet chilled the surface of the North Atlantic and created a bit-
terly cold and dry climate across the surrounding land masses. This period also
includes the global Last Glacial Maximum (c. 20-22 ka) when the major continental
ice sheets in North America and Eurasia reached their maximum extent. To under-
stand the full signifi cance of the data obtained from the North Atlantic marine
sediment record and the Greenland ice cores, it is instructive to consider some early
ideas about the glacial record and the fi rst major paradigm shift in Quaternary
science that took place in the 1970s.

The Alpine Model of Quaternary Glaciation
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, much effort was centred on establishing
the number of Quaternary glaciations and the antiquity of humans (Peake, 1922
and see Grayson, 1990; Gamble, 1994). This period saw some of the earliest inter-
action between geologists and archaeologists (Goudie, 1976). For much of the 20th
century, the glacial record of the Quaternary was synonymous with the framework
put forward by Albrecht Penck and Eduard Brückner published in 1909 and this
model gained widespread support after the First World War (see Peake, 1922;
Bowen, 1978). This scheme was based on geomorphological fi eldwork in the north-
ern forelands of the Alps where they recognised a series of glacial and fl uvial land-
forms (primarily moraines and river terraces) and associated sediments representing
four main periods of Quaternary glaciation (table 13.1). These glacial periods were
named Gunz, Mindel, Riss and Würm after the river valleys that contained these
deposits. The Alpine scheme is based on a discontinuous terrestrial record that

Table 13.1 Penck and Brückner's (1909) model of four major Quaternary glaciations and
interglacials (based on table 2.1 in Bowen, 1978). The values on the right are estimates of
the length of the interglacials relative to the post-glacial (Holocene) period. The Mindel-Riss
interglacial became known as the Great Interglacial

Stage Landform or process

Post- Würm (Holocene) interglacial incision 1

Würm Glaciation Niedterrassen (Low Terrace)

Riss-Würm interglacial incision 3

Riss Glaciation Hochterrassen (High Terrace)

Mindel-Riss interglacial incision 12

Mindel Glaciation Younger Deckenschotter

Günz-Mindel interglacial incision 3

Günz Glaciation Older Deckenschotter