An integrated study (geochemistry, stable oxygen and carbon isotopes, nannofossils, planktonic foraminifera, inoceramid bivalves, ammonites and crinoids) of the Waxahachie Dam Spillway section, north Texas: a possible boundary stratotype for the base of the Campanian Stage

The spillway of Lake Waxahachie, Ellis County (Texas), exposes a > 17 m section of the Hutchins Member of the Austin Chalk Group, un-conformably overlain by Taylor Clay. The Austin sequence was regarded as a potential Global Stratotype Section for the base of the Campanian Stage at the 1995 Brussels meeting on Cretaceous Stage boundaries, with the last occurrence of the crinoid Marsupites testudinarius (von Schlotheim, 1820) as the potential boundary marker. An integrated study of the geochemistry, stable carbon and oxgen isotopes, nannofossils, planktonic foraminifera, inoceramid bivalves, ammonites and crinoids of this section place the last occurrence of M. testudinarius in a matrix of eighteen ancillary biostratigraphic markers, while the boundary can also be recognised on the basis of a delta C-13 excursion that can, in principle, be detected globally in marine sediments. A new forma of the crinoid Marsupites testudinarius is introduced. The Waxahachie section fulfils sufficient geological criteria as to be an excellent candidate GSSP for the base of the Campanian Stage, if problems of ownership and access to the section can be resolved.

Peat, pine stumps and people: interactions behind climate, vegetation change and human activity in wetland archaeology at Loch Farlary, Northern Scotland

First paragraph: In 1993, a peat-cutter, Bruce Field, working on the blanket peat bank he rented from the Sutherland Estate by Loch Farlary, above Golspie in Sutherland (fig 1), reported to Scottish Natural Heritage and Historic Scotland several pieces of pine wood bearing axe marks. Their depth in the peat suggested the cut marks to be prehistoric. This paper summarizes the work undertaken to understand the age and archaeological significance of this find (see also Tipping et al 2001 in press). The pine trees were initially thought to be part of a population that flourished briefly across northern Scotland in the middle of the Holocene period from c 4800 cal BP (Huntley, Daniell & Allen 1997). The subsequent collapse across northernmost Scotland of this population, the pine decline, at around 4200-4000 cal BP is unexplained: climate change has been widely assumed (Dubois & Ferguson 1985; Bridge, Haggart & Lowe 1990; Gear & Huntley 1991) but anthropogenic activity has not been disproved (Birks 1975; Bennett 1995). It was hypothesized that the Farlary find would allow for the first time the direct link between human woodland clearance and the Early Bronze Age pine decline.