An anthropic soil transformation fingerprinted by REY patterns

This Focus article deals intentionally with modern soil disturbance in situ. This is of interest to archaeologistsas after disturbances, both short- and long-term, pedogenesis (re-)starts obliterating previoussigns. Soil modifications induced by human activity may be linked to pedogenetic evidence for disturbancewith archaeological evidence for the cultural activities. We contrasted two 750-m3 soil pedons, anAnthrosol and a Kastanozem, from which the Anthrosol is derived, using 77 descriptors of soil propertieswhich have been utilized in archaeological studies (pedo-morphological, routine laboratory, biochemical,metals and rare earth elements plus yttrium, REY) with the aim of identifying a group of descriptors ableto sort the occurrence of human interventions. But, which one is more promising? Our findings indicatethat by the use of rare earth spatial patterns it is possible to classify the occurrence of human interventions,in the case of emplacement of new parent material in respect to bulk soil disturbance in situ.