Recent  

Palaeobotanical research on oceanic islands has been largely ignored despite its importance for providing empirical proofs to disentangle insular plant diversity, evolution, ecology and biogeography. Here we explore the oceanic archipelagos of Madeira and the Azores to demonstrate the existence of well-preserved and palaeobiologically informative plant fossils.

We investigate two loess–palaeosol sequences in Kashmir. Magnetic enhancement of the loess was strong during stadial phases. Besides classical magnetic enhancement, wind vigour suggests partly strong winds. Grain sizes are dominantly in the silt range and comparable to data from central Asia, which do not suggest transport over high mountain ranges as required for non-local sources in Kashmir. Therefore, we suggest that the Kashmir loess is predominantly of local origin.

This is the preface to the special issue "Geoarchaeology of the Nile Delta: Current Research and Future Prospects", which brings together geoarchaeological case studies from different regions of the Nile Delta.

Evidence of Laacher See tephra in floodplains is mostly restricted to quarry profiles. Within the survey, the spatial distribution of tephra in the entire floodplain is investigated. It became clear that the tephra covers a large part of the floodplain area at different depths and that the deposits allow the river system to be reconstructed at the time of deposition.

Kom el-Gir, an ancient settlement hill in the northwestern Nile Delta, is only one of many so-called tells with a former connection to a watercourse. To establish a detailed reconstruction of this former channel system, this paper presents small-scale investigations of Kom el-Gir’s surroundings using a multi-proxy approach.