Schmidt‐hammer exposure‐age dating (SHD): application to early Holocene moraines and a reappraisal of the reliability of terrestrial cosmogenic‐nuclide dating (TCND) at Austanbotnbreen,Jotunheimen, Norway

Matthews, J. A. & Winkler, S. 2010: Schmidt‐hammer exposure‐age dating (SHD): application to early Holocene moraines and a reappraisal of the reliability of terrestrial cosmogenic‐nuclide dating (TCND) at Austanbotnbreen, Jotunheimen, Norway. Boreas, 10.1111/j.1502‐3885.2010.00178.x. ISSN 0300‐9483. Schmidt‐hammer exposure‐age dating (SHD) and terrestrial cosmogenic‐nuclide dating (TCND) are complementary techniques that can be used for mutual testing. SHD is low‐cost but requires local control points of known age and may be affected by local geological variation and other environmental factors that influence weathering rates. TCND is vulnerable to the occurrence of anomalous boulders, other geomorphological uncertainties and the effects of snow‐shielding at high altitudes. Both techniques are sensitive to post‐depositional disturbances if other than solid bedrock is sampled. SHD was applied to two moraine ridges beyond the Little Ice Age limit of Austanbotnbreen in the Hurrungane massif, southern Norway. Independent regional and experimental local age‐calibration curves were used to reappraise previous TCND results. Neither the two boulder surfaces nor their proximal bedrock surfaces could be differentiated statistically in terms of SHD exposure ages or their mean R‐values (±95% confidence intervals), which ranged from 40.73±1.72 to 43.34±0.69. The best of the independent regional‐calibration curves produced SHD exposure ages of 9413±723 and 9304±602 years, which are consistent with moraine formation early (c. 10.2 ka) and late (c. 9.7 ka) within the late‐Preboreal Erdalen Event. The current precision of SHD, as reflected in 95% confidence intervals of ±500–900 years, enables rejection of a Finse Event (c. 8.2 ka) age for either moraine. Results are consistent with a retracted Austanbotnbreen between the Erdalen Event and the Little Ice Age, and a modified model of Neoglaciation.     

The sedimentology,stratigraphy and 14C dating of a turf‐banked solifluction lobe: evidence for Holocene slope instability at Okstindan,northern Norway

The stratigraphy of a trench excavated through a solifluction lobe lying at an altitude of 860 m a.s.l. on the eastern flank of the Okstindan mountains is described. Sedimentological evidence suggests that the movement was probably dominated by a flow process, with silty sands episodically bursting‐out through a thinly vegetated lobe front in the spring and early summer thaw phases, when pore‐water pressures were likely to be increased. A continuous buried soil extends for some 14 m. Fourteen new radiocarbon age estimates from thin‐slice samples of this buried soil and organic fractions derived from laboratory pre‐treatment procedures are discussed. These data indicate that the solifluction probably commenced in the mid‐Holocene and continued throughout the Neoglacial. The slope instability may be correlated tentatively with the record of glacial variations, shifts in tree lines and archaeological evidence, supporting a link with regional climatic deterioration. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.