An anthropic soil transformation fingerprinted by REY patterns

Abstract

This Focus article deals intentionally with modern soil disturbance in situ. This is of interest to archaeologists as after disturbances, both short- and long-term, pedogenesis (re-)starts obliterating previous signs. Soil modifications induced by human activity may be linked to pedogenetic evidence for disturbance with archaeological evidence for the cultural activities. We contrasted two 750-m3 soil pedons, an Anthrosol and a Kastanozem, from which the Anthrosol is derived, using 77 descriptors of soil properties which have been utilized in archaeological studies (pedo-morphological, routine laboratory, biochemical, metals and rare earth elements plus yttrium, REY) with the aim of identifying a group of descriptors able to sort the occurrence of human interventions. But, which one is more promising? Our findings indicate that by the use of rare earth spatial patterns it is possible to classify the occurrence of human interventions, in the case of emplacement of new parent material in respect to bulk soil disturbance in situ.