The proceedings of the Eleventh International Basement Tectonics Conference is part of a major series of publications dealing with intraplate tectonics. The Eleventh Conference, held in Potsdam, Germany, presents aspects of the basement tectonics of Eastern and Western Europe; the first time they have been assembled in one meeting. Internationally recognised experts in a variety of fields review broad, key, integrative aspects of major fields which contribute to the understanding of the European basement and to geophysical methods of basement analysis. The book focuses mainly on the structure and history of the entire European continent. The recent political reorganisation of Europe has helped to promote several international programs aimed at understanding the deep basement of the European continental features. Accordingly, the majority of the papers included in this volume deal with different aspects on the structure and evolution of the European continent and its various orogenic belts and postorogenic features. Topics range from modelling of the thermal evolution of basement rocks, fabrics in deformed rocks, and geophysical features of basement units to intrusion and concomitant deformation of the basement. Similar aspects are addressed in further chapters focusing on other Phanerozoic cratons and are grouped around topics of current interest: the problem of extrapolation and correlation of geological and geophysical data from basement rocks, and the mechanisms of basement exhumation in the evolution of orogenic belts.

The Eleventh International Conference on Basement Tectonics was held at the GeoForschungsZentrum Potsdam in Germany 25-29 July 1994. It was the first time that a meeting of this series took place in the centre of Europe and the first such meeting in this area after the recent political changes in eastern Europe. Consequently, the main theme of the meeting focussed on the structure and history of the entire European continent. Further themes were grouped around topics of current interest. Keynote lectures on these topics were given by A. Berthelsen, St. Mueller, A. Green, and D. Fountain. The technical sessions were arranged with support of the Scientific Committee on the following topics: 1. Continental scale features of basement rocks of phanerozoic cratons - with emphasis on Europe 2. Extrapolation and correlation of geological and geophysical data from basement rocks: an assessment 3. Mechanisms of basement exhumation in the evolution of orogenic belts 4. Structure and intraplate deformation of the North-American craton Papers submitted to this volume have however all been collected in one part since all of them deal with different aspects of deformation of the continental basement. A second part contains a complete list of all papers and posters presented at the meeting. Field trips to study some of the above mentioned aspects in the Harz mountains, the Granulite Massif, and the Erzgebirge were organized by P. Bankwitz, P. Frischbutter, 1. Rotzler, K. Rotzler, and B. Mingram. Their assistance is gratefully acknowledged.