Phytoliths as proxies of the past

Abstract

Phytoliths are silica casts of plant cells, created within and between living tissues across almost all plant clades. Because they are abundant, durable and distinctive, phytoliths are used to deduce historic vegetation patterns and human uses across the fields of archeology, paleoethnobotany, paleoecology, and historical ecology, particularly at sites where preservation of larger plant-derived samples is poor. Nonetheless, phytolith research has recently contributed to advances in biogeochemical cycling and carbon sequestration. Although much progress has been made over the past few decades, some basic methodological concerns in phytolith systematics and Si cycling still hamper the overall development of this emerging field of science. Here, we first review basic scenarios of phytolith studies across different disciplines of science and then advocate interdisciplinary phytolith research to overcome the challenges of phytolith systematics, inform the representation of Si and C cycling in biogeochemical models, and improve the utility of phytoliths as proxies in archeology and paleontology.