ABSTRACT

The orientation of surface material in the Talus Valley blockfields is shown to confirm to the pattern found elsewhere on periglacial blockfields. This pattern is one in which the material tends to be aligned parallel to the local slope direction and in which the strength of this alignment increases with downslope distance (i.e. with the distance of travel of the material). These results are an improvement over an earlier analysis which showed no simple arrangement of fabrics and the improvement is ascribed to the effects of increased sample size in the present work. The fabrics are best described by a semi-circular normal distribution and, over large areas of the blockfields, this is displaced away from the local slope direction by up to 20%. No adequate explanation of this displacem nt is available but it is suggested that it may be the effect of impeded movement during blockfield emplacement. If this were the case, the cessation of block movement need not be contingent upon climatic change.