Problems of Mid-Post-Glacial Pollen Zonation in Part of North-West England

The present paper is an attempt to state and examine some problems of mid-Post-glacial ecology and chronology in the area south and east of the English Lake District, here referred to as Lonsdale (Fig. 1). Recent pollen-analytical research within and just north of the area (Pennington 1947, Walker 1955; Smith 1958, 1959; Oldfield 1958, 1960a, b; Franks & Pennington 1961; Oldfield & Statham 1963) has produced a concentration of pollen diagrams, many of them spanning the middle of the Post-glacial period. Although as a result it has proved possible to construct a local pollen zonation parallel to that applied to the rest of Britain by Godwin (1956), difficulties in detail have always been apparent, especially in the definition and interpretation of the boundary between Zones VI and Vlla, the so-called 'Boreal-Atlantic Transition'. The following account is mainly concerned with an analysis of this problem and a comparison between the Lonsdale evidence and that from southern and eastern England.