Luminescence dating of aeolian–coastal events on the Kristianstad plain, SE Sweden

Abstract

Aeolian–coastal sediments and landforms are excellent palaeoenvironmental archives, but chronological studies of coastal records are scarce in Sweden. In this study, we provide luminescence and radiocarbon ages of aeolian activity and coastal landscape evolution on the Kristianstad plain, SE Sweden, based on the investigations of two foredunes and two inland dunes at Åhus and Vittskövle. Additionally, we do a laboratory intercomparison of five young luminescence samples. The comparison shows a significant age difference most likely due to an instrumental difference. The equivalent dose cannot be determined accurately with the low irradiation times, and therefore, the results obtained from the reader with a lower dose rate are favoured and are largely supported by historical records. The oldest age, 11.6 ka, is from littoral sediments underlying an aeolian dune at Vittskövle and represents deposition in the Baltic Ice Lake. These deposits are topped by an organic horizon, which developed between AD 1476 and 1637, a time that partially corresponds with a short and abrupt climate warming in the ‘Little Ice Age’. The aeolian deposits are all younger. Sand mobilisation in the inland dunes took place around AD 1686–1799, related to forest destruction during war, intense cultivation of land or/and the coldest phase of the ‘Little Ice Age’. The foredunes are younger and were deposited at the beginning and in the end of the 20th century by easterly winds.