Styles of subglacial glaciotectonic deformation within the context of the anglian ice‐sheet

A substantial proportion of the glacial sediments of East Anglia, England, are chaotic and highly deformed. This has been attributed to (a) direct glaciotectonic deformation or (b) slumping of glaciomarine sediments. We show that interpretation (a) leads to a classification of subglacial glaciotectonic deposits into sites of ‘constructional deformation’, where little or no erosion of the preglacial deposits has occurred and styles of deformation are preserved moving up in the sequence, and ‘excavational deformation’, where substantial erosion of preglacial sediments has occurred and deformational styles are superimposed on each other. By using glaciological and geotechnical theory, we show that the expression of these deformational styles in East Anglia is a natural response to the stress fields imposed by the ice‐sheet, and that in consequence their spatial relationships are explicable. The depth of deformation is related to the geotechnical properties of till and substrate, the stress and effective stress fields, and found to be consistent with observations.