Conclusions
Understanding sediments and soils is important for archaeologists because they almost always hold the key to archaeological context. We cannot be sure that artifacts and other kinds of material culture we find together are culturally associated, for example, by having been deposited during a particular activity, unless we know something about how the deposit in which they were found was formed and transformed over time. Sediment characteristics, such as particle size, shape, and sorting can help us identify such site-formation processes as natural colluviation, frost-heaving, and tipping of refuse into a midden. In addition, they can help us associate sediments in different parts of a site that are probably portions of a single Stratigraphic layer and to reconstruct ancient environmental changes.
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(2002). Soils, Sediments, and Geomorphology. In: Jochim, M.A., Dickens, R.S. (eds) The Archaeologist’s Laboratory. Interdisciplinary Contributions to Archaeology. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/0-306-47654-1_12
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