Abstract/Summary

South-East England is poorly understood in terms of its environmental history due to a paucity of natural wetland sites, especially lakes and mires, spanning much of the Late Holocene particularly during the last 1000 years. The historic period has been largely neglected as a focus for environmental reconstruction despite the clear evidence for climate variability from ice core, marine, tree ring, glaciological, speleothem and lake sedimentary proxy records. Short-term climate changes such as the Little Ice Age, Dalton and Maunder minima would have had a marked impact on the densely populated, agricultural regions of South-East England. Therefore, despite its importance with respect to its cultural, economic and political history, we know little about the interrelationships between climate, environmental and societal change in the South-East. The novel approach adopted in this research was the use of artificial lowland wetlands(ponds, mires and moats), which provided the potential for compiling high temporal resolution records of environmental change. These wetlands provided an opportunity to trace changes in the vegetation cover, landscape erosion, pollution and fire history, which could be integrated with historical, archaeological and proxy data for climate and societal change. The research focused on palaeoenvironmental investigations at five artificial wetland sites: Glovers Pond, Woking Palace, Old Alresford Pond, Knepp and Lurgashall Mill Ponds. This multiproxy study used analyses of sediment description, palynology, µXRF analysis (to determine detrital indicators and industrial pollutants), magnetic susceptibility (to infer influx of terrigenous material/burning) and organic matter determination (to infer autochthonous and allochthonous organic productivity). Detection of trace metals using ICP-OES and Pb isotopic analysis (to trace Pb pollution) was conducted at Knepp Mill Pond. The results demonstrate that these types of site can hold a rich archive of important, high-resolution, local and extra-local information. The reconstructed records were found to cover the historic period at Woking Palace, Old Alresford Pond and Lurgashall Pond. Glovers Pond and Knepp Mill Pond deposits were identified as being much older than anticipated (Glovers Pond spanning from the Mesolithic to the Bronze Age), while Knepp Mill Pond extended from the Iron Age to the Post-Roman period. Both sites provided valuable new palaeoenvironmental records for the South-East, including Bronze Age, Iron Age and Roman Pb pollutant histories.