From raw material to sacred clay, from wall plaster to garden plots, soil plays an intimate role in the lives of agriculturalists. In the lives of archaeologists, however, soil too frequently plays the role of overburden, or the stuff holding the more important things, like stones and bones. At best, soil studies are seen as essential for environmental reconstruction or coming to grips with formation processes. A more grounded approach to interpreting agrarian life involves an understanding and appreciation of soil as a partner. In turn, thinking about soil opens new terrain in the study of landscape perception, ideology and memory. This article explores the potential offered by the materiality of sediments and soilscapes.
ÅhrJ (2010) Hans Haacke versus the myth of Volk. Journal of War & Culture Studies3(1): 51–68.
2.
BahnP (ed.) (1992) Collins Dictionary of Archaeology. Glasgow: HarperCollins.
3.
BoivinN (2004) Geoarchaeology and the goddess Laksmi: Rajasthani insights into geoarchaeological methods and prehistoric soil use. In: BoivinNOwocMA (eds) Soils, Stones and Symbols: Cultural Perceptions of the Mineral World. London: UCL Press, 165–186.
4.
BoivinN (2008) Material Cultures, Material Minds: The Impact of Things on Human Thought, Society, and Evolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
5.
BoivinNOwocMA (eds) (2004) Soils, Stones and Symbols: Cultural Perceptions of the Mineral World. London: UCL Press.
6.
BoivinN. (2005) Comments on A Jones, ‘Archaeometry and materiality: materials-based analysis in theory and practice’, Archaeometry 46(3) 327–338, 2004, and reply. Archaeometry47(1): 198–201.
7.
BourdieuP (1977) Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
8.
BradleyR (2000) An Archaeology of Natural Places. London: Routledge.
9.
BradleyR (2002) The Past in Prehistoric Societies. London: Routledge.
10.
BrunborgLA. (2006) Nutritional composition of blubber and meat of hooded seal (Cystophora cristata) and harp seal (Phagophilus groenlandicus) from Greenland. Food Chemistry96(4): 524–531.
11.
BuchliV (ed.) (2002) The Material Culture Reader. Oxford: Berg.
12.
CarstenJHugh-JonesS (1995) Introduction. In: CarstenJHugh-JonesS (eds) About the House: Lévi-Strauss and Beyond. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1–46.
13.
ChroscickiJ (1998) Ceremonial space. In: ElleniusA (ed.) Iconography, Propaganda, and Legitimation: The Origins of the Modern State in Europe, 13th – 18th Centuries. Oxford: The European Science Foundation/Oxford University Press, 193–216.
14.
CohenAP (1985) The Symbolic Construction of Community. London: Routledge.
15.
CremeensDLHartJP (1995) On chronostratigraphy, pedostratigraphy, and archaeological context. In: CollinsME. (eds) Pedological Perspectives in Archaeological Research. Madison, WI: Soil Science Society of America, 15–34.
16.
CsikszentmihalyiM (1993) Why we need things. In: LubarSKingeryWD (eds) History from Things: Essays on Material Culture. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 20–29.
17.
DalanRABevanBW (2002) Geophysical indicators of culturally emplaced soils and sediments. Geoarchaeology17(8): 779–810.
18.
DeetzJ (1996) In Small Things Forgotten: An Archaeology of Early American Life (rev. edn). New York: Doubleday.
19.
EidtRC (1973) A rapid chemical field test for archaeological site surveying. American Antiquity38(2): 206–210.
20.
EngelbrechtWE (2003) Iroquoia: The Development of a Native World. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press.
21.
EvansJG (2003) Environmental Archaeology and the Social Order. London: Routledge.
22.
EvansJG (2005) Memory and ordination: environmental archaeology in tells. In: BaileyDW. (eds) (Un)Settling the Neolithic. Oxford: Oxbow Books, 112–125.
23.
FrenchCAI (2003) Geoarchaeology in Action: Studies in Soil Micromorphology and Landscape Evolution. London: Routledge.
24.
GellA (1998) Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
25.
GyuchaA. (2006) House construction and settlement patterns on an Early Copper Age site in the Great Hungarian Plain. Communicationes Archaeologicae Hungariae2006: 5–28.
26.
HaalandR (1997) Emergence of sedentism: new ways of living, new ways of symbolizing. Antiquity71: 374–385.
HicksDBeaudryMC (eds) (2010) The Oxford Handbook of Material Culture Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
29.
HjulströmBIsakssonS (2009) Identification of activity area signatures in a reconstructed Iron Age house by combining element and lipid analyses of sediments. Journal of Archaeological Science36(1): 174–183.
30.
HodderI (1990) The Domestication of Europe: Structure and Contingency in Neolithic Europe. Oxford: Blackwell.
31.
HolstMK (2005) An assembly of builders: the social role of barrow building in the South Scandinavian Bronze Age. Paper given at the 11th Annual Meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists (EAA). Cork, 5–11September.
32.
IngoldT (2000) The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livehood, Dwelling and Skill. London: Routledge.
33.
IngoldT (2004) Culture on the ground. Journal of Material Culture9(3): 315–340.
34.
IngoldT (2007) Materials against materiality. Archaeological Dialogues14(1): 1–16.
35.
IngoldT (2010) The textility of making. Cambridge Journal of Economics34(1): 91–102.
36.
JordanP (2003) Material Culture and Sacred Landscape: The Anthropology of the Siberian Khanty. Lanham, MD: Altamira Press.
37.
Kamakawiwo’oleI (1993) White Sandy Beach of Hawai‘i. Track 8. Facing Future, Mountain Apple.
38.
KnappettC (2005) Thinking Through Material Culture: An Interdisciplinary Perspective. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
39.
McLuhanM (1967) The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects. New York: Bantam Books.
40.
McNeillJRWiniwarterV (eds) (2006) Soils and Societies: Perspectives from Environmental History. Strond, UK: The White Horse Press.
41.
MillerD (1987) Material Culture and Mass Consumption. Oxford: Blackwell.
42.
MillerD (1998a) Material culture: the social life of external objects. British Journal of Psychotherapy14(4): 483–492.
43.
MillerD (1998b) Material Cultures: Why Some Things Matter. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
44.
MillerD (ed.) (2005a) Materiality. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
45.
MillerD (2005b) Materiality: an introduction. In: MillerD (ed.) Materiality. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1–50.
46.
OwocMA (2001) Bronze Age cosmologies: the construction of time and space in south-western funerary/ritual monuments. In: SmithATBrooksA (eds) Holy Ground: Theoretical Issues Relating to the Landscape and Material Culture of Ritual Space. Oxford: British Archaeological Reports, 27–38.
47.
OwocMA (2004) A phenomenology of the buried landscape: soil as material culture in the Bronze Age of south-west Britain. In: BoivinNOwocMA (eds) Soils, Stones and Symbols: Cultural Perceptions of the Mineral World. London: UCL Press, 107–122.
48.
ParezoNJ (1996) Material culture. In: LevinsonDEmberM (eds) Encyclopedia of Cultural Anthropology. New York: Henry Holt, 747–752.
49.
ParkinsonWA. (2010) Early Copper Age settlements in the Körös Region of the Great Hungarian Plain. Journal of Field Archaeology35(2): 164–183.
50.
PrownJD (1995) The truth of material culture: history or fiction? In: LubarSKingeryWD (eds) History from Things: Essays on Material Culture. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1–19.
51.
SalisburyRB (2010) Sediments, settlements and space: a practice approach to Late Neolithic communities on the Great Hungarian Plain. Unpublished doctoral thesis, State University of New York, Buffalo.
52.
SalisburyRB (forthcoming) Geochemical evidence of activity zones at Late Neolithic and Early Copper Age settlements in eastern Hungary. Journal of Archaeological Science.
53.
SalisburyRBNiemelKS (2005) Giant’s grave: exploring the cultural significance of prehistoric landscapes within the Genesee River Valley. Northeast Anthropology69: 35–57.
54.
SarrisA. (2004) Geophysical prospection and soil chemistry at the Early Copper Age settlement of Veszto-Bikeri, southeastern Hungary. Journal of Archaeological Science31(7): 927–939.
55.
ThomasJ (1991) Rethinking the Neolithic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
56.
ThriftN (2000) Material culture. In: JohnstonRJ. (eds) The Dictionary of Human Geography. Oxford: Blackwell, 492.
57.
TilleyCJ (1994) A Phenomonology of Landscape: Places, Paths and Monuments. Oxford: Berg.
58.
TilleyCJ. (2000) Nature, culture, clitter: distinguishing between cultural and geomorphological landscapes: the case of Hilltop Tors in south-west England. Journal of Material Culture5(2): 197–224.
59.
Von Klimó Á (2003) Nation, Konfession, Geschichte: Zur nationalen Geschichtskultur Ungarns im europäischen Kontext (1860–1948). Munich: Oldenbourg.
60.
WagnerM (2007) Hans Haacke’s earth samplings for the Bundestag: materials as signs of political unity. Journal of Material Culture12(2): 115–130.
61.
WarkentinBP (ed.) (2006) Footprints in the Soil: People and Ideas in Soil History. Amsterdam: Elsevier.
62.
WellsEC (2004) Investigating activity patterns in prehispanic plazas: weak acid-extraction ICP-AES analysis of anthrosols at Classic Period El Coyote, northwestern Honduras. Archaeometry46(1): 67–84.
63.
WellsEC (2006) Cultural soilscapes. In: FrossardE. (eds) Function of Soils for Human Societies and the Environment. London: Geological Society, 125–132.
64.
WellsECMihokLD (2010) Ancient Maya perceptions of soil, land, and earth. In: WarkentinBP (ed.) Footprints in the Soil: People and Ideas in Soil History. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 311–327.
65.
WiniwarterVBlumW (2006) Souls and soils: a survey of worldviews. In: WarkentinBP (ed.) Footprints in the Soil: People and Ideas in Soil History. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 107–121.
66.
WinterM (1976) The archaeological household cluster in the Valley of Oaxaca. In: FlanneryKV (ed.) The Early Mesoamerican Village. New York: Academic Press, 25–31.
