We are pleased to announce the publication of the first book dedicated to Urban Geoarchaeology, to which Alfredo Mayoral contributes the first chapter!
Alfredo Mayoral, Jean-François Berger, Jean-Luc Peiry, Paul Ledger, Yannick Miras. 2024. “Geoarchaeological analysis of pedosedimentary archives from site-environment interfaces: reconstructing palaeoenvironmental impacts of protohistoric settlements and towns at Corent (France)”, In Q. Bordier and F. Salomon (ed.): Urban Geoarchaeology. CNRS Editions. Pp: 31-50.
Abstract: This chapter presents the integrated geoarchaeological and palaeoenvironmental studies carried out since 2014 in the Lac du Puy, a small wetland within the protohistoric site of Corent in central France. A combination of soil micromorphology, sedimentology, geochemistry, and palynological data was used to analyze its complex pedosedimentary archives. Results allowed us to reconstruct human-environment interactions from the Early Neolithic to the Roman period, and the environmental impacts related to the emergence of protohistoric urbanism in the 1st millennium BCE. Our fi ndings indicate that the local evolution of pedosedimen-tary and environmental conditions was clearly driven by settlement and land-use changes. Aft er an intense soil erosion during the Early and Middle Neolithic related to a fortifi ed settlement, agropastoral land-use contributed to soil profi le sealing and gleyfi cation from the beginning of the Bronze Age. Later on, specifi c environmental impact patterns appear linked with settle-ment intensifi cation phases during the Middle and Late Bronze Age. Th e development of successive urban settlements during the Iron Age (including a Gallic oppidum) caused substantial impacts on soils and the hydro-sedimentary system of the plateau. As a consequence, the Lac du Puy became a depression recurrently fl ooded and was fi nally backfi lled at the end of the period.
Key words: Geoarchaeology; Protohistoric urbanism; Palaeoenvironmental impacts; Socio-environmental interaction; Landscape evolution; Intra-urban wetland; Pedosedimentary archives; Soil Micromorphology; Limagne; Holocene
More information and link to the book here: https://www.cnrseditions.fr/catalogue/ecologie-environnement-sciences-de-la-terre/urban-geoarchaeology/
