Late Holocene landscape instability in the Breckland (England) drift sands

Abstract

This research investigates the landscape instability associated with the drift sands, which are widespread across north-western Europe. It focuses on Breckland, UK using new sites along with existing geomorphic, archaeological and historical data. This shows landscape instability of drift sands occurred at 5240 ± 1040 years BCE, 600 ± 100, 1150 ± 50, 1600 and ~1790 CE. Comparison of these phases to climate records show no clear patterns with drifting occurring during dry/wet as well as cold/warm periods. Additionally, similar climatic shifts lead to diverging reactions of landscapes in different regions throughout Europe. At the regional scale, land usage and population pressures also may not be the direct cause of sand drifting, suggesting that complex responses or different triggers at different times were responsible. Within this, society's unawareness of the inherent landscape instability and the threat posed by the sand hazard may have been important as it affected whether mitigation measures were or could be implemented. In Breckland, initial instability may have been due to the establishment of the open field system on virgin soil. Later changes in land ownership and associated power within the society, led to an inability of communities to implement mitigation measures and large land owners abstaining from tackling the sand hazard. Whilst the widespread coversands and climatic extremes provide the underlying susceptibility to sand drifting, it would appear that drift sands of the last 2000 years may provide less of a sedimentary archive of Late Holocene climatic changes and more a record of land management changes.