Soils as Archive of Cultural Heritage : An Underrated Soil Function in Current EU Policy

Archaeological soils (AS) are found in areas where humans have impacted soils both spatially and temporally through technical, domestic, agricultural, or burial activities. Accordingly, the capacity of soil to preserve cultural heritage was widely recognized as one of the main functions that soil performs. Nevertheless, this function has a limited representation in the recent EU policy instruments, being not clear what this consist of and the actions that their protection implies. The reasons for this inconsistency are many, but ultimately is due to the lack of inventory of AS, which is a consequence of taxonomic and mapping issues. This paper discusses the efficiency of WRB system for classification and mapping the AS, with the attempt to identify possible solutions to improve the AS mapping and their linkage with soil policy and soil management strategies. The results shown that the soil cover within the limits of archaeological site is characterized by a heterogenous association of various soil types occurring in an irregular pattern, which do not allow for an adequate mapping as single map units. The inherent uncertainty that comes from the variability of soil types over short spatial ranges suggests that the use of a generalized mapping unit, under the name Archaeosols, as a soil association encompassing the entire site extent should be considered. It is concluded that a holistic assessment of AS distribution can provide a baseline on which to build further a standardized inventory and an adequate policy framework for accounting and securing these soils in the EU