1. Introduction
Eastern North Brabant in the southern Netherlands has a dynamic
history of habitation. What caused humans to move from one place to
another in the past? Soil exhaustion could have been an important
reason for the changing settlement pattern. The area is part of the
Meuse–Demer–Scheldt region (Roymans and Gerritsen, 2002), which
is dominated by Late Glacial laminated fine to medium fine sand and
laminated loamy sand (Fig. 1). During the Holocene, valley incisions
took place that intersected the cover sand planes and ridges. On a
regional and micro-regional scale level, the original parent material as
well as values of grain sizes may vary considerably, including loam
content of sandy soils. Our research hypothesis states that during the
Bronze- and Early Iron Age (2000–500 BC), the agricultural practices related
to the Celtic field system, caused soil degradation from Umbric
Podzols to Carbic Podzols that were less suitable for farming. These
changing soil conditions led to a radical transformation of the settlement
pattern, which manifests itself during the Middle to Late Iron
Age (500–12 BC) but even more clearly for the Roman period (12 BC–
200 AD; Roymans and Kluiving, 2012). Settlements started to concentrate
on sand substrates with higher soil quality, i.e., topographically
higher soils with increased loam content (Roymans and Gerritsen,