The second 1458 volcano matches no known eruption: a continental-crust rhyolite, far south, never studied
The 1458 to 1459 sulfur in Antarctic ice carries two kinds of glass: dacite that fits Kuwae in Vanuatu, and rhyolite from an unknown volcano outside the tropics in the southern hemisphere (2025 Vostok study). The proposed source, Reclus in Patagonia, had no recorded eruption then and its glass is a poor match.
We compared the rhyolite against every reference glass in the 2025 and 2023 datasets. No volcano is a clear match, but potassium narrows the field: the source was a volcano on continental crust, not an ocean-island arc (rules out the Kermadecs and Tonga) and not an Antarctic volcano. That leaves the southern Andes or New Zealand's Taupo zone. New Zealand's ash record shows no rhyolite eruption after 1314, so the southern Andes are favoured, but not Reclus specifically.
Why this fits our project: these icefield volcanoes are remote, and in 1458 the only people nearby were the Kawesqar, Aonikenk (Tehuelche) and Yaghan, whose traditions were written down centuries later, if at all.
What to check next
- Ask a tephra lab: do trace elements exist for the 1458 shards (Hartman 2019 South Pole core)? Trace elements would separate candidates that major oxides cannot
- Lake and peat cores in southern Patagonia with an ash layer near 490 radiocarbon years: any unanalysed rhyolite?
- Poorly studied Austral volcanoes with few or no glass data: Viedma, Aguilera, Cook Island; check whether any has a young cone