Paleosols,red sediments,and the Old Stone Age in Greece

As elsewhere in the Mediterranean, the Quaternary of Greece stands out by the red color of many of its paleosols and sediments. Both are important, but, in a geoarchaeological context, the distinction between palaeosols and sediments is crucial because they carry different information. Paleosols mature with age, forming a chronosequence that can be studied with simple field methods. The youngest paleosols, some 2000 years old, are at the base of a series of six maturity stages, the most mature of which exceeds 100,000 years in age. Paleosols are useful stratigraphic tools: They identify Palaeolithic land surfaces, correlate regionally variable lithologies, and furnish relative and rough absolute dates for Quaternary sediments and Palaeolithic findspots. Red sediments, on the other hand, are the oxidized residue of limestone weathering that once blanketed large regions where limestone dominates the bedrock. Now mainly redeposited in dissolution basins and closed tectonic troughs of the karst surface, they are the key to water—and wildlife-rich environments valued by Palaeolithic hunter–gatherers and modern farmers. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.