A Late-glacial colluvial sequence at Watcombe Bottom,Ventnor, Isle of Wight,England

In a dry valley near Ventnor, Isle of Wight, thick subaerial slope deposits of Devensian Late-glacial age overlie the Chalk. The deposits are crudely stratified chalk muds and rubble produced by frost-shattering, and moved downslope by the release of water from melting snow-fields and frozen ground. A laterally extensive humic horizon of a rendzina soil occurs within the sequence, clearly reflecting a period of relative slope stability. In places this horizon divides and its upper surface appears to have been disturbed, possibly by cryoturbation. Micromorphological and other analyses confirm the pedogenic origin of this humic horizon, but also demonstrate the occurrence of pedological features both above and below it. The humic horizon therefore is not a ‘buried’ soil in the strictest sense, but is part of a vertical sequence representing a single complex soil with transported, accretionary and welded components. Molluscan analyses reveal that the sequence can be divided into four local mollusc zones, showing a progressive increase in faunal diversity throughout the profile. This succession is broadly similar to other Late-glacial sequences described from south-east England. Minute fragments of charcoal from the lower part of the humic horizon have yielded an AMS date of 11690 ± 120 vr BP, demonstrating formation during the ‘Allerød phase’ of the Late-glacial Interstadial. This humic horizon is correlated provisionally with the ‘Pitstone Soil’, even though existing dates from its type-site in Buckinghamshire are somewhat younger.