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Why does (archaeological) micromorphology have such little traction in (geo)archaeology?

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Abstract

Archaeological deposits are often complex and illustrative of an intricate interplay between geogenic and anthropogenic inputs and formation processes. Even for those archaeologists—particularly prehistorians—who consider the basic principles of natural stratigraphy to excavate their sites, they nonetheless typically underutilize the observations and data available at the microstratigraphic level. The technique of soil micromorphology—or archaeological micromorphology as referred to throughout this paper—has seen an astounding increase in its use to answer archaeological questions and archaeological sediments in the last decades. However, we consider that this tool is still quite underutilized and not as mainstream as other techniques. In this paper, we briefly reflect on what can be some of the causes underlying this situation and how we (that is, both producers and consumers of micromorphology data) can go about to change it. The main idea is that we need to establish a better and more approachable way to present micromorphological results and be better at integrating them with the macroscopic archaeological data and research questions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, NSW, 2502, Australia

    Paul Goldberg

  2. Center for Archaeological Sciences, Eberhard Karls University Tübingen, D-72070, Tübingen, Germany

    Paul Goldberg

  3. Department of Archaeology, Boston University, Boston, MA, 02215, USA

    Paul Goldberg

  4. Department of Human Evolution, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, Leipzig, Germany

    Vera Aldeias

  5. Interdisciplinary Center for Archaeology and Evolution of Human Behavior (ICArEHB), Universidade do Algarve, Faro, Portugal

    Vera Aldeias

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  2. Vera Aldeias
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Correspondence to Paul Goldberg.

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Goldberg, P., Aldeias, V. Why does (archaeological) micromorphology have such little traction in (geo)archaeology?. Archaeol Anthropol Sci 10, 269–278 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12520-016-0353-9

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