Pedological analysis as a key for reconstructing primary loess relief — A case study from the Magdalenian site in Klementowice (eastern Poland)

The subject of the study was a gentle and smooth loess slope, featuring a Magdalenian culture site, located near the northern edge of the loess belt in eastern Poland. Based on the probing of 130 soil profiles across a 10 × 10 m mesh within an area of 1.2 ha, the land surface after the deposition of Weichselian loess was reconstructed. Soil mapping indicated the patchwork character of the present soil cover, which consists of Luvisols of varying degrees of transformation resulting from agricultural use. Partly eroded and buried soils co-occur in the upper part of the ridge flat, non-eroded soils in the middle part, and eroded soils in the lower part, in the archaeological site area, with buried soils at the foot of the slope. ickness of the primary soil cover was reconstructed by means of geostatistical analyses. This was used to reconstruct the primary, undulating land relief characterised by numerous small convex forms (small hillocks and hummocks) and concave forms (closed depressions and slope troughs). These forms were levelled out by soil erosion in the course of agricultural use. The planation of relief caused a decrease of the mean inclination by 25% and elevation difference by 13%. The greatest changes occurred on the ridge flat where the denudation of small hillocks and the filling of closed depressions took place. Local inclinations decreased by up to fourfold and in some places the inversion of slope exposure occurred. the 210 years of agricultural use, the eroded surfaces subsided by an average of 0.32 m and, at most, by 0.92 m, which corresponds to an average of 1.5 mm and 4.3 mm per annum respectively. Less than 50% of the eroded soil material was deposited within the investigated slope; most of the material was carried off beyond it. The accumulated surface, however, is 2.5 times smaller than the eroded surface. Hence the accumulation indicators are slightly higher than the erosion indicators.