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Paper short abstract

The paper examines how archaeological soil data, produced through irreversible disturbance within dynamic soil systems, is mobilised as evidence of care in development frameworks, often legitimising transformation rather than placing limits on it.

Paper long abstract

Archaeologically, soil data is often approached as a methodological problem of representation and measurement. This paper instead questions the conditions under which soil data emerges. Archaeologists do not simply observe soils; they intervene in them, generating knowledge through loss and irreversible transformation. Soil data must therefore be understood as knowledge produced at the point where direct engagement with the ground ends.

Archaeological deposits are treated here not as stable residues of past activity, but as provisional configurations within soil systems characterised by ongoing material and energetic flux. Physical, chemical, and biological processes continue to transform trace elements long after measurement has taken place. Soil data therefore captures neither a stable past nor a completed event, but a moment within systems that remain in flux.

This dynamic quality has important ethical consequences. Within development frameworks, soil data is increasingly mobilised as evidence of care: informing design, enabling avoidance, justifying proportional mitigation, and supporting public engagement. While often well intentioned, such practices operate within schemes already committed to transformation and loss. Under these conditions, data-driven care risks functioning as a moral alibi, leaving the scale, necessity, and energetic throughput of development largely unquestioned.

The paper critically examines the diversification of soil data within mitigation practice, arguing that data-driven soil care becomes consequential only when it confronts its own material and temporal conditions of possibility, rather than offering explanation after loss within systems that continue to metabolise change