@ARTICLE{10.21494/ISTE.OP.2025.1348, 

TITLE={How to detect human activities in intertropical archaeological soils?}, 
  
AUTHOR={Oscar Pascal Malou
, Geoffroy de Saulieu
, Umberto Lombardo
, Javier Ruiz-Perez
, Pascal Nlend
, David Sebag
, Thierry Adatte
, Tiphaine Chevallier
, Frédéric Delarue
, Doyle McKey
, Katell Quenea
, Eric Verrecchia, }, 
	
JOURNAL={Archaeology, Society and Environment}, 
	
VOLUME={5}, 

NUMBER={Issue 1}, 
	
YEAR={2025}, 

URL={https://www.openscience.fr/How-to-detect-human-activities-in-intertropical-archaeological-soils}, 
	
DOI={10.21494/ISTE.OP.2025.1348}, 
	
ISSN={2752-4507}, 
	
ABSTRACT={The characteristics of certain anthrosols are attracting growing interest due to their high carbon (C) stocks. With this in mind, we focused on anthrosols from South America and Central Africa. The South American samples come from three archaeological sites in the Llanos de Moxos region of Bolivia (Isla Manechi, San Pablo, and Isla del Tesoro). In Cameroon, a French-Cameroonian team from the French National Research Institute for Sustainable Development collected samples from two types of anthrosols (dark soils, which we have called Dark soils, and archaeological pit fillings, referred to as Refuse pits), as well as from forest soils (Forest soils). The objective of this study was to assess the impact of past human activities on these soils by conducting specific measurements of their organic status (soil organic carbon content and quality – Corg). The originality of this work lies in its empirical approach and the use of a method rarely applied in archaeology: Rock-Eval® thermal analysis, which allows for the quantification and characterization of soil organic carbon. Thermal analyses of soil samples from archaeological sites were compared with one another and against a reference model. The results indicate that in the Cameroonian sites, the measured carbon is of organic origin. In Bolivia, we focused solely on organic carbon forms, although inorganic carbon forms were also present at San Pablo and Isla del Tesoro, which are shell middens. Findings on the thermal stability of soil organic matter (SOM) highlight that soils from natural environments (Forest soils) or abandoned sites (Dark soils) have a signature comparable to a general model based on a set of undisturbed natural soils. In contrast, soils from human occupation sites deviate from this model. Our hypothesis is that this deviation serves as an indicator of ancient human occupation. The magnitude of this deviation could reflect the intensity or type of anthropogenic activities that took place on these intertropical archaeological soils. We propose an integrative parameter to measure the degree of SOM disturbance in relation to human impact on soils. This preliminary study suggests that the method could, in principle, detect the imprint of human activities on archaeological site soils.}}