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Encyclopedia of Geoarchaeology pp 239–245Cite as

Eolian Settings: Sand

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Part of the book series: Encyclopedia of Earth Sciences Series ((EESS))

Definition

Dunes and other sand depositional settings.

Introduction

Large numbers of important archaeological sites have been identified in areas with sand dunes and eolian sand deposits: on ocean coasts (Erlandson et al., 2005; Winterbottom and Dawson, 2005; Anderson et al., 2006) where middens are often abundant, on lake shores such as those of Lake Michigan (Lovis et al., 2012), and in the world’s dry lands (which will be the main focus of this entry). Dunes provide an environment of accumulation in which (1) artifacts may be preserved (e.g., Fuchs et al., 2008); (2) indications of former climatic and other environmental conditions may be buried in temporal sequences, such as paleosols (Butzer, 2004) and phytoliths (Boyd, 2005); (3) lake deposits (Parker and Goudie, 2008), fluvial gravels (Atkinson et al., 2013), and other indicators of humidity may be interspersed within the sand; and (4) strata or levels within the accumulation may be susceptible to dating by techniques such as...

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford, OX1 3QY, UK

    Andrew S. Goudie

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  1. Andrew S. Goudie
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Correspondence to Andrew S. Goudie .

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  1. Fordham University, Bronx, NY, USA

    Allan S. Gilbert

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Goudie, A.S. (2017). Eolian Settings: Sand. In: Gilbert, A.S. (eds) Encyclopedia of Geoarchaeology. Encyclopedia of Earth Sciences Series. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-4409-0_154

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