Mapping buried Holocene landscapes: past lowland environments, palaeoDEMs and preservation in GIS

Abstract

In a geological GIS-data recombination project, a digital map was produced that holds information on the Netherlands’ former coastal and delta plain landscapes in the last 14,000 years: the Holocene and the very end of the Pleistocene. The end product polygon maps are accompanied by a set of palaeoDEMs indicating the ‘attention depth’ for buried land surfaces and aquatic deposits; both for four time slices. This paper provides conceptual background on legend and construction principles of the polygon maps and the palaeoDEMs (‘decisions during the making off’) and a basic overview of the map product (‘landscape structure’, ‘burial depth’, ‘preser¬vation’), visualised for the four time slices of RCE’s Archaeological Knowledge Kit. The text links the coastal plain buried landscape mapping for time slices T0, T1, T2 and T3, to the other Knowledge Kit activities described in this volume, notably that of the Archaeological Landscape map (for time slice T4 in the coastal plain part of The Netherlands, for time slice T0 to T4 in the Pleistocene uplands).