Minimally Invasive Approaches to the High-Resolution Mapping of Colluvial Deposits at the Battlefield of Waterloo: Implications for Archaeological Practice

Abstract

Soil erosion poses a considerable threat to ecosystem services around the world. Among these, it is extremely problematic for archaeological sites, particularly in arable landscapes where accelerated soil degradation has been widely observed. Conversely, some archaeological deposits may obtain a certain level of protection when they are covered by eroded material, thereby lessening the impacts of phenomena such as plow damage or bioturbation. As a result, detailed knowledge of the extent of colluvial deposition is of great value to site management and the development of appropriate methodological strategies. This is particularly true of battlefield sites, where the integrity of artifacts in the topsoil is of great importance and conventional metal detection (with its shallow depth of exploration) is relied upon as the primary method of investigation. Using the Napoleonic battlefield of Waterloo in Belgium as a case study, this paper explores how different noninvasive datasets can be combined with ancillary data and a limited sampling scheme to map colluvial deposits in high resolution and at a large scale. Combining remote sensing, geophysical, and invasive sampling datasets that target related phenomena across spatial scales allows for overcoming some of their respective limitations and derives a better understanding of the extent of colluvial deposition.