quaternary Article Detection and Characterisation of Eemian Marine Tephra Layers within the Sapropel S5 Sediments of the Aegean and Levantine Seas Christopher Satow 1,*, Katharine M. Grant 2, Sabine Wulf 3, Hartmut Schulz 4, Addison Mallon 5, Ian Matthews 5 and John Lowe 5 1 Department of Social Sciences, Oxford Brookes University, Headington Road, Oxford OX3 0BP, UK 2 Research School of Earth Sciences, The Australian National University, Canberra ACT 2601, Australia;
[email protected] 3 School of the Environment, Geography and Geosciences, University of Portsmouth, Buckingham Building, Lion Terrace, Portsmouth PO1 3HE, UK;
[email protected] 4 Department of Geosciences, University of Tübingen, Hölderlinstr. 12, 72074 Tübingen, Germany;
[email protected] 5 Centre for Quaternary Research, Department of Geography, Royal Holloway University of London, London TW20 OEX, UK;
[email protected] (A.M.);
[email protected] (I.M.);
[email protected] (J.L.) * Correspondence:
[email protected] Received: 16 December 2019; Accepted: 19 February 2020; Published: 13 March 2020 Abstract: The Eemian was the last interglacial period (~130 to 115 ka BP) to precede the current interglacial. In Eastern Mediterranean marine sediments, it is marked by a well-developed and organic-rich “sapropel” layer (S5), which is thought to reflect an intensification and northward migration of the African monsoon rain belt over orbital timescales. However, despite the importance of these sediments, very little proxy-independent stratigraphic information is available to enable rigorous correlation of these sediments across the region. This paper presents the first detailed study of visible and non-visible (cryptotephra) layers found within these sediments at three marine coring sites: ODP Site 967B (Levantine Basin), KL51 (South East of Crete) and LC21 (Southern Aegean Sea).