ABSTRACT
Climatic variability or climatic change is often invoked as the cause or partial cause of changes in the geomorphic, faunal, floral and archeological records. However, if botanical, archeological or geomorphological evidence from a large area suggests synchronous change, climatic change is a likely causal mechanism. Although meteorological parameters often exhibit mild gradients within an airstream, much stronger gradients are found across the boundaries between one airstream and another, i.e., along fronts. J.C. Knox suggested that geomorphic evidence should also tend to exhibit discontinuities in process on or about the times of climatic change. He identified several discontinuities from a sample of 102 radiocarbon dates from the periphery of the Great Plains, indicative of alluvial changes. Climatological evidence suggests that the components of climate, i.e., thunderstorms, rainfall events, mean and extreme temperatures, etc., have occurred throughout the Holocene, but that the assemblage of these components is significantly different from one episode to another.
