The landscape position of the Roman period cemetery and pedological meaning of its cultural layer at the Malbork-Wielbark archaeological site (northern Poland)

Abstract

Cultural layers are soil-sedimentary formations transformed by human activity. Unlike other anthropogenic soils/horizons, the cultural layers representing ancient cemeteries at archaeological sites are rather rarely studied. This research characterises the cultural layer of the eponymous cemetery of the Wielbark culture related to the Goths, dated to the Roman period (BC/AD) and located in northern Poland. The cemetery was founded in the edge zone of a morainic plateau and the delta of the Vistula river, on a small inland dune hillock, forming the least fertile habitat in the area. The necropolis covers more than 2200 burials. It was used continuously for about 600 years and preceded by a pre-Roman settlement phase. In the stratigraphy, human activity is recorded as a cultural layer, covering relics of the primary soil, which is a Podzol developed from quartz sand. The cultural layer is buried under younger colluvial and aeolian sediments reaching a thickness of 2.2 m. Radiocarbon and dendrochronological datings confirm the layer was formed between 2555 ± 35 BP and 1590 ± 30 BP. The pedological features of the Wielbark cultural layer are unlike those of other types of anthropogenic soil/horizon. It is characterised by an extremely sandy texture, dark grey to black colour, and low organic carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus contents. The black colouration relates to accumulation of pyrogenic black carbon originating from specific burial rituals of the Wielbark people. Classification of the Wielbark cultural layer according to the WRB soil classification seems problematic: it does not fit the criteria of any anthropogenic or natural surface diagnostic horizon. Its specificity may be marked only by the use of the Pyric supplementary qualifier. In terms of traditional pedological nomenclature, the described Wielbark-type cultural layer may be considered as ‘archaeo-necrosol’.