Applied Soils and Micromorphology in Archaeology

Richard I. Macphail is Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London. He is coauthor of Soils and Micromorphology in Archaeology (with Marie-Agnhs Courty and Paul Goldberg, Cambridge, 1990) and Practical and Theoretical Geoarchaeology (with Paul Goldberg, 2005), and the editor of 'Site Formation Processes in Archaeology: Soil and Sediment Micromorphology' (in Quaternary International, 2012). Macphail has initiated workshops (1990–2016) and training (2006–16) in archaeological soil micromorphology (within the International Union of Soil Science), was associate editor for Geoarchaeology (1990–2014), Professor Invité at Tours in 2004, and gained the Rip Rapp Award from the Geological Society of America in 2009. Paul Goldberg is Professor Emeritus at the Department of Archaeology, Boston University and Professorial Research Professor at the University of Wollongong, Australia. He is coauthor of Soils and Micromorphology in Archaeology (Marie-Agnhs Courty and Richard I. Macphail, 1990) and Practical and Theoretical Geoarchaeology (with Richard I. Macphail, 2005). He received the Rip Rapp Award from the Geological Society of America in 2002, the Fryxell Award in 2008, and the Pomerantz Award from the Archaeological Institute of America for Scientific Contributions to Archaeology in 2010. In 2004 and 2013 he was the recipient of the Alexander von Humboldt Senior Award at Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen, Germany. His principal research focus is aimed at using soil micromorphology to understand how archaeological sites form.

Part I. Background Approach and Methods: 1. Applied principles from geology and soil science; 2. Complementary analyses; 3. Systematic soil micromorphology description; Part II. Soils and Sediments: 4. Soils and burial (horizon types and effects of burial in the Temperate and Boreal regions); 5. Soil-sediments; 6. Inundated freshwater and coastal marine sites; Part III. Archaeological Materials: 7. Archaeological materials and deposits; Part IV. Features and Activities in the Landscape: 8. First records of human activity; 9. Clearance and cultivation; 10. Occupation surfaces and use of space; 11. Settlement morphology; 12. Site transformation; 13. Final remarks.