PEDOSTRATIGRAPHY, GEOARCHAEOLOGY AND QUATERNARY RESEARCH

Abstract

Soil has been currently studied with reference to its primary functions and economic value, in terms of biomass production, agriculture fertility, environmental filter, genic reserve, organic carbon sink. Besides primary functions, attention has been deserved to soils as stratigraphic records and privileged archives of archaeological or palethnological findings, and of paleogeographic, paleo-environmental and paleoclimatic features, i.e. as cultural container. Numerous examples of pedostratigraphic sections, soil landscapes and, more generally, cultural landscapes are available in current literature. Most of them are paleosols, or are related to archaeological sites, and therefore are historical records of natural and human events, source of information and knowledge: in a sole word, soils are actual cultural heritage. In this paper some study cases are proposed in order to overcome the balk between pedology, archaeology and environmental conditions.

Keywords

• pedostratigraphy
• geoarchaeology
• quaternary research