AMS dating Swedish varved clays of the last glacial/interglacial transition and the potential/difficulties of calibrating Late Weichselian ‘absolute’ chronologies

Abstract

The increasing focus on the chronology of environmental and climatic changes of the last glacial‐interglacial transition has led to several independent attempts to try to calibrate the 14 C time‐scale beyond the Holocene. The Late Weichselian Gotiglacial varved clays of the Swedish Time Scale could potentially be used for this purpose. The reliability of the Swedish Time Scale is discussed as well as different ways of using the Swedish varved clays for calibrating the 14 C chronology. The strategy and initial results from an ongoing calibration project are presented. They show clearly that, if the right strategy is adopted, varved clay may be dated by accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) 14 C measurement of terrestrial macrofossils. A Late Weichselian ‘event stratigraphy’, including the Vedde Ash fall‐out, is established for south Scandinavia using three dating categories: clay varve measurements, terrestrial macrofossil measurement, and lake sediment (including aquatic mosses) measurements. It suggests that a 14 C chronology based on terrestrial organic remains is not consistent with the traditional Late Weichselian chronostratigraphy based on lake‐sediment samples, and that ‘clay varve years’ exceed ‘terrestrial 14 C years’ by c. 900 years at the end of, and by 1100–1200 years at the beginning of the Younger Dryas Chronozone. Further back in time, the time‐scales appear to converge. These results are compared with other recently published calibration studies.