the pollen diagrams, the landscape patterns, anthropogenic, hydrological, climatic and soil events.
The Appendix contains an alphabetic list of all countries and a subdivision into type regions. All reference sites within the type regions are shown with number, name, co-ordinates and elevation. It is indicated, if the site studied was a lake or mire, which time period in 14 C years the investigated sequence spans and how many radiocarbon dates are available. Furthermore, it is indicated if pollen percentages and/or pollen concentrations have been obtained and which other types of investigation (e.g. diatoms, plant and animal macrofossils, cladocera, chemical analyses) have been performed. The main scientists and a reference to the year of publication are given. Not all the reference sites mentioned in the Appendix are, however, described in the text.
The amount of information, the quality, reliability and resolution of the data sets presented in each chapter varies extensively. Whereas, for example, the chapters on Great Britain, Poland and Scandinavia are very well presented and the data discussed in an admirable way, i.e. all type regions are represented in the text and illustrated by various reference sites, the type regions presented and discussed for other countries, such as, for example, France and Switzerland, may not be fully representative. For France, which is a fairly large country with a long research tradition, only the lower Seine Valley, the Vosges, the lower Loire Valley, the Pyrenees and the French Alps are presented. Similarly, the Swiss lowland may not be representative for a country as diverse as little Switzerland. Although the lack of much data is clearly a negative aspect of the present book, I really do not intend to blame the editors for this shortage. On the contrary, I admire the enthusiasm, energy, persistence and diplomacy, which must have guided them until the book finally reached the printing office in 1996.
However, something that startles me, as a geologist, is how over and over again a palaeoecologist can look at the pollen content of a sediment without describing the lithostratigraphy. Many of the pollen diagrams presented here completely lack any lithostratigraphical description and the few stratigraphies presented are of such a poor quality that I asked myself, how can palaeoecologists arrive at an environmental interpretation if the most basic tool, the sediment stratigraphy is so completely neglected? I really miss an overall synthesis chapter, where the editors could have summarised the most important findings/events along different transsects. Figures and diagrams could have compared, in a simplified and more general form, the timing of the vegetational development across Europe, and displayed the time-synchroneity or time lags of the different events. Diverging developments could have been pointed out and the underlying causes for these could have been discussed in relation to human and/or climatic impact.
It is, of course, always much easier to criticise a book than to write and/or edit 764 pages. It is certainly not the easiest task to unite scientists from so many different countries and to make them respect deadlines. Therefore, and despite my remarks, I regard the present volume as an extraordinary achievement and as an enormous step forward in summarising data, which previously had been hidden in journals and in drawers. Much effort has also been put into a coherent structure of the individual chapters and illustrations. I regard the book as an excellent reference volume with respect to the general vegetation development during the past 15 000 yr and, especially, the last 10 000 14 C yr. Quaternary scientists, palaeoecologists, plant ecologists and archaeologists may all find plenty of information on individual countries, on the arrival and expansion of different plant