The Kashmir Valley in the Western Himalayas is situated at the intersection between the summer monsoon driven environments of South Asia and the westerly dominated Central Asia. This geography positions the Kashmir Valley as an environmenal niche suitable for exploring the long-term development of agro-pastoralist ecology now prevalent thoughout the Inner Asian mountain ranges. This dataset comprises pollen, fungal spore, charcoal, sediment particle size and magnetic susceptibility records from three mid- and high-altitude meadows in the west of the Kashmir Valley, covering a period of roughly the last 4500 years. Variability in indicator pollens and spores, charcoal and sediment size in the dataset may be indicative of localised land-use and modification by agro-pastoralists, while other proxy data may reflect broader patterns of regional environmental change.

See included Spate_2021_Kashmir_Cores_README.txt for descriptions of field sampling, lab extraction and data processing.

Pollen, fungal spore and charcoal data are presented as absolute abundances.

Processed sediment data as % and geometric measures.

Magnetic susceptibility as dimensionless measurements in SI.