Analysis of prehistoric brown earth paleosols under the podzol soils of Exmoor, UK

Chris Carey, Hayley White, Richard Macphail, Lee Bray, Rob Scaife, Lisa McClung, Alison Macleod

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    Abstract

    The deforestation of the upland landscapes in southwest Britain during prehistory is an established archaeological narrative, documenting human impacts on the environment and questioning the relationship of prehistoric societies to the upland landscapes they inhabited. Allied to the paleoenvironmental analyses of pollen sequences, which have provided the evidence of this change, there has been some investigation of prehistoric paleosols fossilized under principally Bronze Age archaeological monuments. These analyses identified brown earth soils that were originally associated with temperate deciduous woodland, on occasion showing evidence of human impacts such as tilling. However, the number of analyses of these paleosols has been limited. This study presents the first analysis of a series of pre-podzol brown earth paleosols on Exmoor, UK, two of which are associated with colluvial soil erosion sediments before the formation of peat. This study indicates these paleosols are spatially extensive and have considerable potential to inform a more nuanced understanding of prehistoric human impacts on the upland environments of the early-mid Holocene and assess human agency in driving ecosystem change.

    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)772-799
    Number of pages28
    JournalGeoarchaeology
    Volume35
    Issue number5
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 6 Apr 2020

    Bibliographical note

    This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium,provided the original work is properly cited.

    Keywords

    • Paleosol
    • Brown earth
    • Soil micromorphology
    • Sediment analysis
    • Podzol
    • soil micromorphology
    • paleosol
    • sediment analysis
    • podzol
    • brown earth

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