The Holocene

The Holocene is an interdisciplinary journal covering environmental change during the past ~11,700 years — the Holocene epoch. Founded by Arnold in 1991 with John A. Matthews (Swansea University) as founding editor, the journal was published by Arnold for fifteen years before being transferred to SAGE Publications in the 2006 Hodder Arnold journal-list sale.

Editorial scope spans Holocene palaeoclimatology, palaeoecology and palaeoenvironmental reconstruction; the late-Quaternary geomorphology of continental and coastal landscapes; sea-level change and shoreline geomorphology; archaeological science (geoarchaeology, dendrochronology, palaeoethnobotany); and the wider questions about human-environment interaction across the Holocene. The journal carries both data-rich case studies and methodological papers, with a consistent editorial preference for multi-proxy reconstructions and well-dated cores or sequences.

Under Matthews' founding editorship the journal established itself as a leading venue for Holocene quantitative palaeoenvironmental research and has remained so through the SAGE era. Articles from the Arnold years (1991–2006) continue to be cited in current IPCC chapters, in regional palaeoclimate syntheses, and across the wider Quaternary-science literature.