Late-Holocene glacier variations in the Cordillera Darwin, Tierra del Fuego, Chile

Radiocarbon dates obtained on peat and macrofossils, sampled both proximally and distally, of a terminal moraine in the Bahia Pia area, Cordillera Darwin, Tierra del Fuego, Chile, indicate that the glacier system reached maxima sometime before 3060 BP, prior to 940 BP and between 940 BP and 675 BP. The glacier retreated 4 km to a pinning-point position where it dammed a lake before 2605 ± 80 BP, between 1950 ± 75 and 1790 ± 75 BP and some time shortly after 1790 ± 75 BP. By 250 BP the glacier system had receded more than 15 km towards the fjord head and probably reached close to its present position. Thus we obtained no evidence from Bahia Pia of any glacial advance occurring during the global 'Little Ice Age' maximum (seventeenth to nineteenth centuries).