Abstract Volcanic ash is dispersed over thousands of kilometres during large-scale eruptions, forming sedimentary layers. These ash (tephra) deposits are increasingly being used as unique marker layers in a variety of sedimentary archives including ice cores, and terrestrial and marine records. Tephra dispersed during large explosive eruptions that coincide with the defined beginning of the Anthropocene could therefore be used to help identify this event in various archives, and assess the relative spatial differences in marked anthropogenic change. The 1815 eruption of Tambora, Indonesia, was the largest in historical time and occurred in the middle of Europe’s Industrial Revolution. Volatile emissions injected into the atmosphere during this eruption caused widespread effects including the ‘year without a summer’ during which there were anomalously cooler temperatures recorded across much of North America and Europe. Sulphate aerosols associated with the eruption were dispersed by stratospheric and tropospheric winds across the entire globe. Deposits of these are clearly recorded in the Earth’s key palaeoclimatic records: polar ice cores. Significantly, the Tambora eruption occurred immediately prior to substantial increases in greenhouse gases, a defining feature of the Anthropocene.

Small deposits of Neoproterozoic ironstone in the New Jersey Highlands are hosted by the Chestnut Hill Formation, a terrestrial sequence of siliciclastic rocks, sparsely preserved felsic and mafic volcanic and tuffaceous rocks, and thin limestone metamorphosed at greenschist-facies conditions. Sediments of the Chestnut Hill Formation were deposited in alluvial, fluvial, and lacustrine environments in a series of fault-bounded subbasins along the Iapetan eastern Laurentian margin. Ironstone occurs mainly in the upper part of the sequence in sandstones, quartzites, fine-grained tuffs, tuffaceous sediments, and carbonate-bearing beds. Ore is massive to banded and contains the assemblage hematite ± magnetite, which is locally associated with tourmaline and Fe silicates + sericite + calcite + chlorite ± quartz. Ironstone alternates with clastic bands, and sedimentary structures in ore bands and clastic bands are consistent with alternating chemical and clastic sedimentation deposited synchronously. Chestnut Hill rocks exhibit geochemical compositions that are dissimilar to typical sedimentary and volcanic rocks. They display evidence for two stages of post-diagenetic alteration. The first stage involved widespread potassium metasomatism, which produced increased values of K, Ba, and Rb that are not correlated with increased Fe or other hydrothermal elements. The metasomatizing fluid may have been basinal water heated during emplacement of Chestnut Hill volcanic rocks. The second stage produced alteration of Chestnut Hill rocks, and also Mesoproterozoic rocks along the footwall contact of the deposits, by hydrothermal fluids likely from a volcanogenic source. The ironstone deposits were formed by hydrothermal processes related to extension during formation of continental rift subbasins in the New Jersey Highlands. Iron was sourced from Fe-rich Mesoproterozoic rocks at depth, where it was leached by hydrothermal fluids that migrated upward along extensional faults. Iron and other metals were precipitated in permeable basin sediments and chemically favorable volcanic rocks, as well as precipitated directly as chemical sediment.

Abstract The Appalachian Piedmont in south-central Pennsylvania and north-central Maryland contains metasedimentary siliciclastic rocks (phyllites to quartzites) that were deposited largely offshore of Laurentia, prior to and during the early history of the Iapetan Ocean. The Peach Bottom area is centered on the belt of Peach Bottom Slate and overlying Cardiff Quartzite, which is surrounded by the late Neoproterozoic and early Paleozoic rocks of the Peters Creek and Scott Creek (new name) Formations. Their provenance was the Brandywine and Baltimore microcontinents that lay farther offshore of the Laurentian coast. This area also includes an ophiolitic mélange that formed in front of an advancing island arc in Iapetus. All these rocks lay largely undisturbed throughout much of the Paleozoic, experiencing only chlorite-grade greenschist facies metamorphism through deep burial. Alleghanian thrusting associated with the growth of the Tucquan anticline imparted their present widespread, monocline, steep southeast dip of the bed-parallel foliation.