Identifying the Brazil nut effect in archaeological site formation processes
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Identifying the Brazil nut effect in archaeological site formation processes David Luria1 · Alexander Fantalkin1 · Ezra Zilberman2 · Eyal Ben‑Dor3 Received: 14 November 2019 / Revised: 6 March 2020 / Accepted: 26 March 2020 © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Abstract The Brazil nut effect (BNE) is a physical phenomenon by which large granular particles (i.e., archaeological artifacts) in a bed of small disturbed particles (i.e., soil), rise to the top surfaces. This paper examines the physical forces acting on archaeological artifacts—scattered on the surface and buried underground—to identify the major elements of site formation processes (SFPs). Combining theoretical advances in archaeology, pedology, granular physics and spectroscopy, we conducted accelerated laboratory tests on seven typical Israeli soils to form a SFP model. We suggest that the SFPs are the result of two opposing and continuous processes: soil coverage of the site started soon after human activity has ceased, and a force(s) that tends to lift buried artifacts up to exposed surfaces, acting in accordance with Brazil nut effect (BNE). The post-burial forces pressuring artifact movement upward are affected by the artifacts’ density and size, soil characteristics and the local environment. As a result, some archaeological artifacts reach exposed surfaces, some are lifted to higher soil deposits but remain buried, and the rest remain in their original burial context. Keywords Archaeological site formation · Field survey · Brazil nut effect · Soil · Pedology · Granular physics · Spectroscopy
Introduction Site formation process (SFP): preface An SFP is any event involving interactions of physical forces, human activity and the environment that affect the characteristics of the archaeological record (Sullivan and Dibble 2014). An understanding of SFPs is obligatory for any rigorously assessed scientific reconstruction of the cultural past. As such, SFPs belong among the core concepts of any archaeological inquiry (e.g., Schiffer 1987, 2010; Karkanas and Goldberg 2018). Controlling for the impacts of SFPs is crucial to the discipline because archaeologists use the patterns of artifact dispersal in the ground to infer behaviors
* Alexander Fantalkin [email protected] 1
The Sonia and Marco Nadler Institute of Archaeology, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel
2
The Geological Survey of Israel, Jerusalem, Israel
3
The Department of Geography and Human Environment, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel
(Stein 2001). One of the major challenges, therefore, is the identification of patterns that are created by ancient behaviors as opposed to those created by later cultural and natural processes. In this respect, one of the major research avenues in the study of SFPs deals with post-depositional and recovery processes (e.g., Schiffer 1972, 1983, 1985; Clarke 1973; Sullivan 1978). According to O’Shea (2002: 212), post-depositional theory is concerned with what happens after an object has left the systemic archaeologi
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