A Handbook of Geoarchaeological Approaches to Settlement Sites and Landscapes by French Charles;

Author:French, Charles;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: SOCIAL SCIENCE / Archaeology
ISBN: 4509735
Publisher: Oxbow Books, Limited
Published: 2015-11-29T16:00:00+00:00

Fig. 42. The Neolithic old land surface sealed beneath medieval sand dunes on Moussonniere Beach, Herm (C. French)

The degree of woodland cover associated with this soil is as yet uncertain due to poor pollen survival in this palaeosol, but there are hints of a developing late glacial-early Holocene pine-birch woodland present (Scaife in Scarre and French 2013). There is much better pollen data present from peat beds on the north coast of Guernsey which does indicate widespread deciduous woodland growth in the earlier Holocene (Campbell 2000). Certainly, the often well organised fine illuvial clay and silty clay components of the palaeosol strongly hint that this soil developed in association with a stable and well drained vegetational complex such as woodland (cf. Bullock and Murphy 1979; Fedoroff 1968; Macphail et al. 1987).

There is the strong possibility of in situ ploughmarks defining at the base of the former topsoil (or lower A/B horizon transition boundary). This is seen clearly in the palaeosol on Moussonniere Beach (Fig. 42) and around Tombs 12 and 13 (Fig. 43) with an agric horizon, compaction zones and illuvial dusty clay present (Macphail et al. 1987, 1990; Kuhn et al. 2010), which together with the sand-filled cut features are indicative of ard ploughing (Fig. 44) (Gebhardt 1992; 1995; Lewis 1998; 2012). This occurs along with abraded small flint and pottery artefacts of Neolithic age in the B horizon. Indeed post-clearance ploughing in Neolithic times associated with the building of the chambered tombs could be partly responsible for creating the environmental conditions necessary to allow the subsequent extensive truncation of this early Holocene soil. This is a consistent feature of all the palaeosol profiles observed and analysed in The Common area. Once devegetated, this granular, very fine to fine quartz sand-dominated soil would have easily been subject to drying out and wind-blow, thus leading to rapid deflation and truncation effects. This is probably the reason why most of the buried soils observed in this research project were missing their upper organic A horizons. In addition, the associated surface horizon disturbance caused by a combination of ploughing and truncation with rainfall impact on an open and largely fine granular soil system would have led to both within-soil illuviation down-profile of fines (clay, silt and fine organic matter) (Macphail et al. 1987; 1990; Kuhn et al. 2010, 221), as well as their depletion leading to more sand-dominated soils. In short, any de-vegetating activities on this soil would have soon led to both soil destabilisation and the depletion of fines material and nutrient degradation, making the sustained use of this landscape for agriculture in the past very questionable without intensive manuring and planned management.

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