An ethnoarchaeological perspective on soils

As archaeologists become increasingly sophisticated in their use of soils in understanding settlement patterns, it is necessary to consider what prehistoric food producers might have known about the soils of their landscape and how this could have influenced their land use strategies. A review of ethnopedological studies demonstrates that non‐Western soil classifications tend to be less developed than comparable folk botanical or zoological classifications and that they usually consist of no more than four or five soil categories. An analysis of historic settlement patterns of the Nigerian Kofyar shows that soil variability may not be the primary determinant in the location of early agricultural settlements. Archaeologists may wish to follow the lead of traditional agriculturalists and understand the full variety of locational constraints on agricultural settlements, before using subtle differences in the distribution of soils as the primary explanation of settlement variability.