Healthy soils are essential to a sustainable future. In today’s rapidly expanding urban contexts, they are fundamental to improving biodiversity and well-being, storing water, and supporting urban farming. While the immediate impacts of today’s human actions on soil health are readily grasped, the long-term effects of past human actions on soil are less well understood. Archaeology provides a critical long-term perspective of soil formation in urban landscapes. In dense urban areas like London, where human activity is concentrated, development-led archaeology also contributes to the discussion by providing up-to-date information on the status and character of urban soils (‘technosols’). Most of this information is not easily accessible to policymakers or other specialists on soil health. This PhD aims to develop a conceptual and information model to bring together archaeological information on past and present urban soils and relevant research on soil health. The PhD candidate will compile, interpret, and repurpose various archaeological and geotechnical data to develop the model. Ultimately, the project aims to produce a novel approach to connect knowledge about long-term human interaction with the pedosphere to more pragmatic, pressing concerns about soil health in the contemporary urban landscape.
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