The Kansan glaciation or Kansan glacial (see Pre-Illinoian) was glacial stage and part of an early conceptual climatic and chronological framework composed of four glacial and interglacial stages.
Kansan glaciation was used by early geomorphologists and Quaternary

Quaternary

The Quaternary Period is the most recent of the three periods of the Cenozoic Era in the geologic time scale of the ICS. It follows the Neogene Period, spanning 2.588 ± 0.005 million years ago to the present...

 geologist

Geologist

A geologist is a scientist who studies the solid and liquid matter that constitutes the Earth as well as the processes and history that has shaped it. Geologists usually engage in studying geology. Geologists, studying more of an applied science than a theoretical one, must approach Geology using...

s to subdivide glacial and nonglacial deposits within north-central United States from youngest to oldest and are as follows:

• Wisconsin
  Wisconsin glaciation
  The last glacial period was the most recent glacial period within the current ice age occurring during the last years of the Pleistocene, from approximately 110,000 to 10,000 years ago....
  
   (glacial)
• Sangamonian (interglacial)
• Illioian (glacial)
• Yarmouthian (interglacial)
• Kansan (glacial)
• Aftonian (interglacial)
• Nebraskan (glacial)

As developed between 1894 and 1909, the Kansan Stage was based on a model that assumed that the Pleistocene deposits contained only two glacial till

Till

thumb|right|Closeup of glacial till. Note that the larger grains in the till are completely surrounded by the matrix of finer material , and this characteristic, known as matrix support, is diagnostic of till....

s and one volcanic ash

Volcanic ash

Volcanic ash consists of small tephra, which are bits of pulverized rock and glass created by volcanic eruptions, less than in diameter. There are three mechanisms of volcanic ash formation: gas release under decompression causing magmatic eruptions; thermal contraction from chilling on contact...

 bed within Nebraska and Kansas.