We relate the pressure `dip' observed at the bottom of a sandpile prepared by
successive avalanches to the stress profile obtained on sheared granular layers
in response to a localized vertical overload. We show that, within a simple
anisotropic elastic analysis, the skewness and the tilt of the response profile
caused by shearing provide a qualitative agreement with the sandpile dip
effect. We conclude that the texture anisotropy produced by the avalanches is
in essence similar to that induced by a simple shearing -- albeit tilted by the
angle of repose of the pile. This work also shows that this response function
technique could be very well adapted to probe the texture of static granular
packing.Comment: 8 pages, 8 figures, accepted version to appear in Eur. Phys. J.
