Analogue Methods in Palaeolimnology

Abstract

Tephrochronology provides time-parallel marker horizons that allow a level of precision few (if any) other geochronological techniques can offer. The wide range of extraction techniques and increasingly sophisticated methods of finger-printing tephra are helping to extend the provenance of known horizons and the identification of previously unrecorded events, making tephrochronology a powerful geochronological tool when applied to lake sediment sequences. Consequently, tephra layers are now routinely detected and identified in both visible and micro-tephra (or cryptotephra) forms, and are used to test important scientific hypotheses, in the fields of archaeology, climate research and environmental reconstruction.