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.
