Identifying an ancient surface requires distinguishing it from modern landforms and recognizing it as a "horizon of demonstrable antiquity". Recognition often relies on several key indicators:

: Features such as lateritization, bauxitization, and palaeokarstification provide chemical evidence of past weathering processes acting on a surface.

Reconstructing these ancient landscapes involves piecing together fragmented geological data to build a coherent model of the past topography:

: High-resolution Digital Elevation Models (DEMs) can be constructed by integrating LiDAR data with geological and historical information to map past valley floors and floodplains.

: The presence of ancient soil profiles is a primary indicator of a subaerially exposed surface. These soils can range from simple exposure surfaces to complex, polyphase profiles that record long-term landscape stability.