Memories of the deep past: The importance of the soil memory concept for paleopedology studies

Abstract

Paleopedology is an interdisciplinary and historical scientific field focused on the study of fossil soils and ancient landscapes. Like other historical sciences such as geology and paleontology, paleopedology works with incomplete datasets and preservation biases. Despite these challenges, paleosols provide valuable paleoenvironmental, paleobiological, and paleoecological data, allowing for inferences about past events and entities. The aim of this paper is to engage in a reflective exercise on the role played by the soil memory concept as an epistemic tool to overcome contingency, underdetermination, and equifinality—common phenomena within historical sciences—in interpretation of paleosols. The soil memory concept is related to the capacity of soil record information about soil forming factors and pedogenic processes in their characteristics. This work discusses how soil memory serves as a conceptual and methodological framework that facilitates the establishment of analogical reasoning in paleopedology. Soil memory in paleopedology identifies regularities between paleosols and soils, linking different pedogenic characteristics and processes across various spatial and temporal scales, thereby allowing paleoenvironmental explanation. Soil memory provides an ’experimental context’ to emphasize the observed regularities between different objects, such as Precambrian and Quaternary paleosols at different scales. Soil memory is not a definitive explanation but rather an open, dynamic, and exploratory tool that helps guide subsequent research steps and refine questions based on weak and in some cases unrelated evidence. Recent years have seen increased interest in the capacity of historical sciences, particularly geology and paleontology, to provide comprehensive explanations for complex events from the deep past. Integrating paleopedology into this discussion enhances our understanding of how scientific knowledge about past environments is constructed, and how the historical sciences contribute to scientific explanations.