Sedimentary matrix

Landscape context can be defined at small, medium, and large scales. The most detailed is the site microenvironment, defined in terms of the local physical and biotic parameters that influenced the original site selection, that were effective during the period of site use, and that were responsible for its burial and subsequent preservation. The record most immediately available for study and interpretation is the sediment that embeds the site components. This sediment may be penecontemporaneous with site occupance, or it may be younger, often substantially so. The first objective in site analysis is to examine the sedimentary matrix of the site and so to identify the related depositional environment. Such study requires considerable geomorphological expertise.

The basic effect of the geomorphic processes is to model the earth's surface. Of this wide range of potential forces, some are internal or endogenic, deriving directly from the lithosphere. These include the faulting and folding linked to ongoing earthquake activity and the lava flows and ash falls associated with volcanic eruptions. The other group of forces is external or exogenic, reflecting the impact of atmospheric or hydrospheric agents on the lithosphere (see Table 2–1). These processes include the effects of running water (both channeled and diffuse surface runoff), gravity (both slow and rapid effects, and in wet and dry media), wind, ice, and waves.