GOUGH'S CAVE: MICROSTRATIGRAPHY OF LATE PLEISTOCENE/EARLIEST HOLOCENE SEDIMENTS 



55 



had formed in Late Devensian scree produced from limestone, and 

 was itself sealed by further scree dating to the ensuing Loch Lomond 

 Stadial. Thus the dominance of sedimentation over 'pedogenic' and 

 post-depositional effects, as at Gough's Cave is typical of Winder- 

 mere Interstadial sites. One exception is the interstadial soil at 

 Westhampnett, West Sussex, where a very thin in situ humic ranker 

 had formed under a likely coniferous woodland cover (Macphail, 

 1995). 



At Gough's Cave the renewed cold conditions of the Windermere 

 Stadial are apparently recorded in the major disruption of sedimen- 

 tary bedding and previously formed banded fabrics/linked cappings. 

 This cold climate produced chaotic mixing of the deposits and 

 resulted in the infilling of void space with impure clay and silts and 

 clays (Figs 3, 4). Some channels and vughs formed previously by 

 biological activity are coated and infilled, clearly revealing that the 

 period of inwashing post-dated this activity (Table 2). Some of the 

 clayey sediment adhering to the skeletal remains could thus be of the 

 same origin, the orientation of the bones also possibly reflecting this 

 period of disruption. For example, in the well-preserved Upper 

 Palaeolithic occupation cave deposits at Arene Candide, Liguria, 

 Italy, once- horizontal hearths were disrupted by this (Younger 

 Dryas) freezing and thawing (Macphail et al., 1994). 



At the Sand Hole, the lowermost clay deposits (Fig. 5) appear to 

 have been little affected by the Loch Lomond Stadial, but rather 

 seem to reflect sedimentation strongly associated with faunal activ- 

 ity during the Late Pleistocene-Early Holocene transition. Typical of 

 earliest Holocene deposits, speleothem formation dominated sedi- 

 mentation in the Sand Hole, with the moist conditions possibly also 

 favouring the contemporary amphibian fauna (Currant, NHM, pers. 

 comm.). 



CONCLUSIONS 



This study of the sediment micromorphology enabled us to identify 

 the sedimentary sequence that was contemporaneous with the hu- 

 man occupation/Windermere Interstadial, in spite of the paucity of a 

 continuous sequence of cave sediments. Specifically, we were able 

 to demonstrate an upward fining sedimentary sequence, pene-con- 

 temporary with both cool and mild climatic effects. The last led to 

 ephemeral biological activity, and is consistent with a number of 

 other contemporary, sediment-dominated sites in southern England. 

 The investigation also showed that not only sediments but also the 

 skeletal remains themselves were likely influenced by localised 

 post-depositional processes (minor reworking, fine sediment inwash), 

 dating to the cooler conditions of the Loch Lomond Stadial (?). In the 

 Sand Hole, the transition between the Windermere Interstadial/Loch 

 Lomond Stadial and the earliest Holocene, is recorded in the 

 sediments. This detailed microstratigraphic approach exemplified 

 here appears to offer the ability to extract the maximum sedimentary 

 information from disparate and discontinuous deposits within a 

 sedimentary system. 



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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS. We gratefully acknowledge a grant from Natural 

 History Museum Interdisciplinary Research Fund and the help of Chris Jones 

 for making the thin sections; some thin sections were made at the Institut 

 National Agronomique, Paris-Grignon (M. A. Courty and N. Fedoroff). The 

 help and encouragement of Chris Stringer, Andy Currant and Roger Jacobi is 

 very much appreciated as well as those of others of the excavation team who 

 facilitated this study. We also thank the anonymous referee for their com- 

 ments. 



