The Archives of Peat Bogs

Sir Harry Godwin has written a companion volume to his widely acclaimed Fenland: its ancient past and uncertain future.

Harry Godwin (Author)

9780521107129, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 11 June 2009

240 pages
24.6 x 18.9 x 1.3 cm, 0.44 kg

Sir Harry Godwin has written a companion volume to his widely acclaimed Fenland: its ancient past and uncertain future. He follows the same historical approach that made Fenland so interesting. Vast rain-fed peat bogs still cover the landscape of northern and western Britain, their ecology, vegetation and flora unfamiliar to most of our population. Yet, through the millennia since last Ice Age, they have accumulated ever-deepening acidic peat, whose plant remains are a precious archive of the events of the past. Upon investigation, the reconstructed bog vegetation gave clues to former climatic history, pollen analysis provided a chronological scale dependent upon changes in upland forest composition and archaeological objects from the Mesolithic to the Roman period were recovered by peat-diggers from observed horizons in the bogs. The Archives of Peat Bogs will be of great interest to a wide readership comprising both amateur and professional biologists, geologists, geographers, archaeologists, naturalists and antiquarians.

Acknowledgements
1. Introduction: Quaternary research and mires
2. Living raised bog
3. Raised bog stratigraphy: first steps
4. Blanket bog
5. Plants of the bogs: Sphagnum
6. Plants of the bogs: sedges and such
7. Plants of the bogs: dwarf shrubs etc.
8. Recent peat of Somerset: a double inundation
9. Trackways in context
10. Geology of levels and lakes: marine transgressions and lake settlements
11. Old peat and Neolithic culture
12. Disforestation and agriculture
13. Pollen zones and sea-level changes absolutely dated
14. Climatic registration
15. The archive appraised
References
Short glossary
Index.

Subject Areas: Botany & plant sciences [PST]