The age and contemporary environments of Tower Hill volcano, southwest Victoria, Australia

Tower Hill ash forms a useful chronological marker for archaeological and geological sites in the Warrnambool-Port Fairy area. The current paper establishes an age of 35 ± 3 ka for the eruption of Tower Hill. Confidence in this age is provided by the agreement of results from three dating techniques on different types of material - accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) radiocarbon dating of lake core sediments in a crater of the volcano, conventional radiocarbon dating of plant remains in a palaeosol buried by volcanic ash and thermoluminescence dating of quartz grains in a sand covered by the ash. Palynological analysis of lake sediment indicates the presence of a steppe-type vegetation at the time for which no present day analogue exists in Australia.