Human Transformations of the Earth

Charles French

• Publisher: Oxbow Books
• Year: 2022
• Topic: Social Sciences
• eBook ISBN:
  9781789259223
• Subtopic: Geology & Earth Sciences
• Index: Social Sciences

This book charts and explains how human activities have shaped and altered the development of soils in many parts of the world, taking advantage of five decades of soil analytical work in many archaeological landscapes from around the globe. The core of this volume describes and illustrates major transformations of soils and the processes involved in these that have occurred during the Holocene and how these relate to human activities as much as natural causes and trajectories of development, right up to the present day. This is done in two ways: first by examining a number of major processes and impacts on the landscape such as Holocene warming and the development of woodland, clearance and agricultural activities, and second by examining the trajectories of these changes in soil systems in different palaeo-environmental situations in several diverse parts of the world. The transformations identified are relevant to prevalent themes of today such as over-development and soil, land and environmental degradation and resilience. The studies articulated relate to Britain, southeastern Europe, the Mediterranean basin, East Africa, northern India and Peru in South America.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• Author
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Methodological approaches
• 3 Soil transformation trajectories in temperate European landscapes
• 4 Major soil transformation trajectories in southern Mediterranean landscape systems
• 5 Major soil transformation trajectories in arid soil systems
• 6 Timescales and longevity of soil processes
• 7 Understanding long-term resilience in transformed soils
• Bibliography
• Glossary of terms
• Index