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cryoturbation

 
Geography Dictionary: cryoturbation

This term is variously used. It can represent all the weathering processes that prevail in a periglacial landscape or be extended to include the churning up of rocks and soil. Some writers reserve the term for irregular displacements of soil horizons, while using the term periglacial involutions for more regular disturbances.

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Archaeology Dictionary: cryoturbation
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[Ge]

Disturbances and the rearrangement of clasts within soils and subsoils as a result of freeze–thaw processes in periglacial conditions. Convection currents and pressure caused by ice crystals in subsoils that refreeze after a seasonal thaw act to rotate stones and soil particles, with the result that they show marked structuring. Such structures, for example ice-wedges, pingos, stripes, stone rings, and involutions, can be misidentified as archaeological features.

 
 
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congeliturbation (geology)
involution
till (in archaeology)

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Geography Dictionary. A Dictionary of Geography. Copyright © Susan Mayhew 1992, 1997, 2004. All rights reserved.  Read more
Archaeology Dictionary. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Archaeology. Copyright © 2002, 2003 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.  Read more