ABSTRACT
Snow-capped Alpine ranges appear on the horizon almost everywhere in Switzerland; routes over the major Alpine passes skirt glaciers; many villages occupy sites threatened even today by avalanches and flooding. No wonder documents relating to glacier advances are abundant. Glaciers have commonly extended below the treeline, overriding trees and leaving their stumps in place. With wood and other organic material suitable for radiocarbon analysis, moraines have been more effectively dated here than in many other parts of the world. Weather diaries and phenological records date back several centuries. The Swiss were the first to make systematic annual measurements of the changing positions of glacier fronts. 1 The climatic implications of glacier fluctuations, first recognized in the early nineteenth century, have attracted renewed scientific attention in recent years (Pfister 1979a, 1980b, 1992a, b, 1994a, b, Pfister et al. 1994a, b, 1996, 1998a, b). As a result of all this activity, the timing and sequence of glacier fluctuations during the Little Ice Age have been traced in more detail in the Swiss Alps than anywhere else.
