The deforestation of the upland landscapes in southwest Britain during prehistory is an established archaeological narrative, documenting human impacts on the environment and questioning the relationship of prehistoric societies to the upland landscapes they inhabited. Allied to the paleoenvironmental analyses of pollen sequences, which have provided the evidence of this change, there has been some investigation of prehistoric paleosols fossilized under principally Bronze Age archaeological monuments. These analyses identified brown earth soils that were originally associated with temperate deciduous woodland, on occasion showing evidence of human impacts such as tilling. However, the number of analyses of these paleosols has been limited. This study presents the first analysis of a series of pre‐podzol brown earth paleosols on Exmoor, UK, two of which are associated with colluvial soil erosion sediments before the formation of peat. This study indicates these paleosols are spatially extensive and have considerable potential to inform a more nuanced understanding of prehistoric human impacts on the upland environments of the early‐mid Holocene and assess human agency in driving ecosystem change.

中文翻译：

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英国埃克斯穆尔Podzol土壤下史前褐土古土壤的分析

史前时期英国西南部山地景观的砍伐是一项既定的考古学叙事，记录了人类对环境的影响，并质疑史前社会与其所居住的山地景观的关系。与花粉序列的古环境分析相关联，这提供了这一变化的证据，人们对主要在青铜时代的考古纪念碑下化石化的史前古土壤进行了一些研究。这些分析确定了最初与温带落叶林有关的棕壤土​​壤，偶尔显示出耕作等人类影响的证据。但是，这些古土壤的分析数量是有限的。这项研究是对英国埃克斯穆尔（Exmoor）的一系列前Podzol棕壤古土壤进行的首次分析，其中有两个与泥炭形成之前的冲积土壤侵蚀沉积有关。这项研究表明，这些古土壤在空间上是广泛的，并且具有很大的潜力，可以使人们对史前人类对全新世早期高地环境的影响有更细微的了解，并评估人类在推动生态系统变化中的作用。