Identifying Military Impacts on Archaeological Deposits Based on Differences in Soil Organic Carbon and Chemical Elements at Soil Horizon Interfaces.

摘要

Military training is often assumed to negatively impact archaeological resources, but methodologies to estimate or infer damage to these resources are expensive and time consuming. Cultural resources managers require a technique allowing them to estimate past and current impacts of training on archaeological site condition and determine if the site is capable of supporting future training activities. The technical objectives of this research were (1) to demonstrate that naturally occurring and culturally induced stratigraphic differences in a suite of soil parameters, such as soil organic carbon and chemical elements, at the interface of near-surface soil horizons can be disrupted to varying degrees by military training and other (e.g., agricultural) human actions and (2) to use this predictable stratification as the basis for an innovative, low-cost, widely applicable, reliable method to identify the onset and quantify the extent of adverse impacts to archaeological deposits that are associated with military training.