Persistent Place-Making in Prehistory: the Creation, Maintenance, and Transformation of an Epipalaeolithic Landscape

Most archaeological projects today integrate, at least to some degree, how past people engaged with their surroundings, including both how they strategized resource use, organized technological production, or scheduled movements within a physical environment, as well as how they constructed cosmologies around or created symbolic connections to places in the landscape. However, there are a multitude of ways in which archaeologists approach the creation, maintenance, and transformation of human-landscape interrelationships. This paper explores some of these approaches for reconstructing the Epipalaeolithic (ca. 23,000–11,500 years BP) landscape of Southwest Asia, using macro- and microscale geoarchaeological approaches to examine how everyday practices leave traces of human-landscape interactions in northern and eastern Jordan. The case studies presented here demonstrate that these Epipalaeolithic groups engaged in complex and far-reaching social landscapes. Examination of the Early and Middle Epipalaeolithic (EP) highlights that the notion of “Neolithization” is somewhat misleading as many of the features we use to define this transition were already well-established patterns of behavior by the Neolithic. Instead, these features and practices were enacted within a hunter-gatherer world and worldview

Demands on soil classification and soil survey strategies: special-purpose soil classification systems for local practical use

Classifying soils for a particular purpose involves the ordering of soils into groups with similar properties and for potential end uses. The classification of soil is a terrific conceptual and practical challenge, especially in arid environments. The challenge may spur on, or it may deter scientists or end users with an interest in soils. If a classification system proves to be relevant and user-friendly, it stimulates and encourages further work because it is recognised for its inherent capacity to create order and enhance the useful understanding and mapping of soils. General-purpose, internationally recognised soil classification systems such as Soil Taxonomy and the World Reference Base and other nationally recognised classification systems (e.g. Australian or South African) have proved to be tremendously useful for soil classification and advancing understanding of soils across the world. However, because the use of these general-purpose classifications requires considerable expertise and experience, there is a need for complementary special-purpose classification systems that are specifically tailored, for example, to particular environmental problems, land uses or local regions and that use plain language descriptions for soil types. General-purpose classification systems often lag in the incorporation of new terminologies, for example, classification of acid sulfate soils in the Murray-Darling Basin, Australia, has led to descriptions of soil types with subaqueous properties (submerged underwater), monosulfidic materials and hypersulfidic materials, to enable assessment of environmental risk and management options. In addition, new challenges face general-purpose soil classification systems, especially in response to the following questions most frequently asked by soil users: (1) what soil properties are changing vertically and laterally in landscapes and with time, especially in acid sulfate soils? and (2) what are the most suitable approaches for characterising, monitoring, predicting and managing soil changes for environmental impact assessments, pollution incidents, waste management, product development and technology support? The purpose of this chapter is to address these challenges by presenting new ideas and concepts on how best to predict and solve practical problems by focussing on the development of special-purpose or more technical soil classification systems, which use plain language names for soil types. To demonstrate the critical importance of developing special-purpose technical soil classifications, the following five case studies are presented, which tackle difficult problems involving highly complex issues: (1 and 2) soil and water degradation in large aquatic environments from the River Murray and Lower Lakes region in South Australia (changing climatic and anthropogenic modified environments) and from the Mesopotamian marshlands in Iraq (anthropogenic modified arid environment); (3) acid sulfate soil as a new geochemical sampling medium for mineral exploration; (4) soil damage to the Australian telecommunication optic fibre cable network from shrink-swell soils and soil corrosion; and (5) soil landscape features to assist police in locating buried objects in complex terrain.R. W. Fitzpatric

Weathering rates of sandstone in a semi-arid environment (Hunter Valley, Australia)

The rate of sandstone weathering in the semi-arid climate of the Hunter Valley, New South Wales, Australia has been estimated from observations of gravestone weathering in the area. The gravestone data points to two distinct stages in the weathering process. The first stage covering the first century of exposure is characterised by a relatively low recession rate of 0.5 mm/100 years. This is followed by a second stage in which the rate of weathering increases sharply to ca 2.5 mm/100 years. The non-linear nature of the weathering trends over time suggests that during the first century of exposure, structural changes took place within the sandstone material, which lay the foundation for accelerated weathering after further exposure. Laboratory trials were also conducted to identify the effectiveness of different weathering processes in the decay of sandstone in this region. Of the four processes examined, only the freeze-thaw cycle produced a significant degree of mass loss and is therefore most likely a strong contributor to the weathering of sandstone in this region