JOURNAL OF QUATERNARY SCIENCE (1998) 13 (6) 515–528 CCC 0267-8179/98/060515–14$17.50  1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Replicability and variability of the recent macrofossil and proxy-climate record from raised bogs: field stratigraphy and macrofossil data from Bolton Fell Moss and Walton Moss, Cumbria, England KEITH BARBER 1 *, LISA DUMAYNE-PEATY 2 , PAUL HUGHES 1 , DMITRI MAUQUOY 1 and ROB SCAIFE 1 1 Palaeoecology Laboratory, Department of Geography, University of Southampton, Southampton SO17 1BJ, England 2 School of Geography, University of Birmingham, Birmingham B15 2TT, England Barber, K., Dumayne-Peaty, L., Hughes, P., Mauquoy, D. and Scaife, R. 1998. Replicability and variability of the recent macrofossil and proxy-climate record from raised bogs: field stratigraphy and macrofossil data from Bolton Fell Moss and Walton Moss, Cumbria, England. J. Quaternary Sci., Vol 13, pp. 515–528. ISSN 0267-8179 Received 26 March 1998; Revised 15 May 1998; Accepted 25 May 1998 ABSTRACT: Replication of results is a basic tenet of science, but in palaeoecology this is very time-consuming and the ‘signal’ is subject to ‘noise’. The derivation of proxy-climate signals from ombrotrophic peat was carried out originally using samples from open peat faces where the stratigraphic relationships could be easily observed. Now that such sections are rare and often degraded there is a need to demonstrate that data can be replicated from core profiles. Ten short cores taken from two adjacent bogs have been analysed for macrofossils and show a coherent series of changes, which are also similar to previous profiles from the same sites. It is concluded that variation between profiles is slight and less than observations of present vegetation mosaics might suggest. Recommendations for a standard approach to fieldwork on raised bogs that emphasises the utility of subfossil pool layers are proposed and the need for a secure chronology is stressed.  1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. KEYWORDS: core replication; peat stratigraphy; macrofossil analysis; climate change. Introduction and rationale The proxy-climate record of raised and blanket bogs has a long history of research, with stratigraphic work going back into the last century. More recently there has been a revival of interest in the multiproxy data that can be derived from peat deposits (Barber, 1993). In western Europe, hand-cutting of peat, with the accompanying deep drainage ditches of a metre or more in depth, was still widespread up until the 1970s, but today new peat extraction techniques and conser- vation measures mean that sections such as those investi- gated by Walker and Walker (1961), Casparie (1972), van Geel (1978) and Barber (1981) are rare. Research on deriving a more precise and reliable proxy-climate signal from peat * Correspondence to: K. Barber, Palaeoecology Laboratory, Department of Geography, University of Southampton, Southampton SO17 1BJ, England. E-mail: Keith.Barbersoton.ac.uk Contract grant sponsor: English Nature; contract grant number: F/14/01/440 Contract grant sponsor: Natural Environment Research Council, UK Contract grant number: GR9/01646 stratigraphy has therefore been hampered to some extent by the lack of sections, and profiles of plant macrofossils, humification, testate amoebae and other proxies have had to be constructed from cores of 5–10 cm diameter. The question therefore arises as to how representative such a core can be of the stratigraphic changes in the bog as a whole. Many of the oceanic ombrotrophic bogs where sections are available for inspection exhibit layered stratigraphy, rather than an abundance of hummocks or the lenticular structures of the Regeneration Complex (Sernander, 1910; Osvald, 1923). As Barber (1981) and Backeus (1991) have shown, the stratigraphic underpinning of the latter hypothesis was very much lacking. The few photographs of sections that have been used to support lenticular regeneration (e.g. Godwin, 1981) have lacked any analyses of macrofossils to demonstrate that such a sequence of change had occurred. In many bogs of the Atlantic region, where long sections are available, distinct layers of peat, especially of Sphagnum section Cuspidata, may be traced along drainage ditches for several hundred metres (personal observations, 1966–1998). Figure 1 shows six examples of peat stratigraphy from bogs in England, Ireland, Denmark and The Netherlands. In all