The early Postglacial environment of Scotland: Evidence from a site near Tyndrum, Perthshire

Abstract

Pollen‐stratigraphic evidence is presented from a site in the Grampian Highlands of Scotland in which a detailed record is preserved of early Postglacial plant succession in an area previously occupied by glacier ice. Following an initial period of open habitat conditions during which sedge‐moss communities were interspersed with large areas of bare, disturbed ground, the area around the site was colonised first by Empetrum heath, and then successively by juniper scrub, birch, and then birch‐hazel woodland. On a local scale, the biostratigraphic record implies a rapid shallowing of lake waters during the early Postglacial, due possibly to relatively dry climatic conditions which prevailed in the area after ca. 9000 B.P. Radiocarbon dates were obtained from the basal sediments in the site, but these are regarded as aberrant due to groundwater contamination. In view of the poor resolution associated with the radiocarbon‐dating of Lateglacial and early Flandrian events in Britain, a method is proposed here whereby pollen stratigraphic evidence at widely separated sites can be employed to gauge the extent to which deglaciation at the end of the Loch Lomond (Younger Dryas) Stadial was time‐transgressive across the Highlands of Scotland