The evidence presented above may be compared with conclusions that have been drawn from studies elsewhere, although regional and local site conditions vary a great deal. Considerable colluvial storage of eroded soil materials has been suggested, particularly in the loess terrains of southern Germany (Bork, 1989, Lang, 2003, Houben, 2003, Houben, 2012 and Dotterweich, 2008) and Belgium (Broothaerts et al., 2013); from the much later phase of cultivation Afatinib in North America (Happ et al., 1940 and Walter and Merritts, 2008); but also from prehistoric

site studies in the UK (Bell, 1982, Brown and Barber, 1985 and Brown, 1987). On the other hand, French et al. (2005) suggest that in UK chalkland areas early soil erosion and thick colluvial deposits may have been less than previously supposed. Stevens and Fuller (2012), following an analysis of radiocarbon dates for wild and cultivated plant foods, suggest that an agricultural

revolution took place in the UK during the Early-Middle Bronze Age. This shift, from long-fallow cultivation to short-fallow with fixed plots and field systems, fits well with the timing of accelerated floodplain deposition identified in this study, and with the apparent lag between the development of agriculture in the Neolithic and accelerated sedimentation described elsewhere (Houben et al., 2012). However, dated AA deposits, rather than a whole catchment BAY 73-4506 manufacturer sediment budget, have been analyzed here so that the question of whether there actually was lagged remobilization of early colluvial sedimentation, or whether early colluvial deposition was not that extensive in the first place, cannot be answered using our data. Our data set does, however, emphasize the importance of mediaeval erosion as noted in the UK (Macklin et al., 2010) and elsewhere in Europe (Dotterweich, 2008 and Houben et al., 2012). We also draw attention to the variable autogenic conditions involved in alluvial sequestration of AA: catchment size, depositional environments, and the grain sizes involved. Anthropogenic impact and sediment supply are commonly

also discussed in terms of hillslope soil erosion parameters, but channel erosion by network extension and by lateral/vertical erosion were also important sediment sources for later re-deposition. In the Holocene, sediment exchange within alluvial systems supplied large volumes both of coarse and fine material (cf. Passmore and Macklin, 2001, Chiverrell et al., 2010 and Macklin et al., 2013), and for alluvial sedimentation hydrological factors affecting competence-limited channel erosion and network extension are as significant as the supply-limitation factors affecting the input of slope materials. There is a suggestion within our data set that such hydrological factors were important for the early entrainment and deposition of channel bed materials, whether surface soil stripping was important or otherwise ( Fig. 5 and Fig. 6).