Overview

This book charts and explains how human activities have shaped and altered the development of soils in many parts of the world, taking advantage of five decades of soil analytical work in many archaeological landscapes from around the globe. The core of this volume describes and illustrates major transformations of soils and the processes involved in these that have occurred during the Holocene and how these relate to human activities as much as natural causes and trajectories of development, right up to the present day. This is done in two ways: first by examining a number of major processes and impacts on the landscape such as Holocene warming and the development of woodland, clearance and agricultural activities, and second by examining the trajectories of these changes in soil systems in different palaeo-environmental situations in several diverse parts of the world. The transformations identified are relevant to prevalent themes of today such as over-development and soil, land and environmental degradation and resilience. The studies articulated relate to Britain, southeastern Europe, the Mediterranean basin, East Africa, northern India and Peru in South America. AUTHOR: Charles French is Professor Emeritus of Geoarchaeology and Director of the McBurney Laboratory for Geoarchaeology in the Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge. He specialises in the analysis and interpretation of buried landscapes using geomorphological and micromorphological techniques, and has been involved in many landscape projects around the world.

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9781789259209

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Reviews

"""French's book is written for geoarchaeologists and advanced students interested in micromorphology. It will be difficult for anyone without a solid soil science background. For its audience, it summarizes an impressive body of work, provides an extensive bibliography, and champions a theoretical orientation that I hope will prod North American geoarchaeologists to expand beyond our usual foci and reemphasize human transformations of the environment.""--F. Scott Worman ""Journal of Anthropological Research, Fall 2023"""

Author Information

Charles French is Professor Emeritus of Geoarchaeology and Director of the McBurney Laboratory for Geoarchaeology in the Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge. He specialises in the analysis and interpretation of buried landscapes using geomorphological and micromorphological techniques, and has been involved in many landscape projects around the world.

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