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International audience

International audience

International audience; The work undertaken since 2002 by the Franco-Syrian team on the site of Tell Al-Rawda has led to confirmation that this was a new city constructed in the steppe in the middle of the third millennium and abandoned only a few centuries after its foundation, about 2200 BC (radiocarbon determinations calibrated through Bayesian analysis ). The work of B. Geyer’s team (“Mission des Marges Arides”) had already shown that Al-Rawda was positioned on the eastern edge of a front of colonisation that developed in the Early Bronze IV, before these places were abandoned by sedentary populations to be later resettled for a relatively brief period in the Byzantine period. The arid context gives rise to questions concerning the subsistence conditions of a population that, although difficult to estimate, would appear high in relation to the potential resources offered by this environment. This population would certainly have had an impact in terms of exploitation and modification of a fragile environment; today we observe a slow degradation over the long term, although this is not possible to define it temporally. Can we learn how the population of the second half of the third millennium in this region organised and exploited this territory? What were the reasons for this relatively brief occupation? What were the environmental constraints that the population had to face and that required adaptation, and what led to the abandonment of this territory?

International audience; Culling profiles are important and widely used statistical objects in archaeozoological studies. Topics such as site specific use (like seasonal cave penning), sites complementarity, site status (“producer” versus “consumer” sites), specialized production strategies (milk, meat and/or wool strategies) and, more generally, long term evolution of pastoral practices rely strongly upon this kind of data. Here we show that a long lasting and widespread error in the construction and interpretation of culling profiles sheds doubts on the validity of the economic, territorial and breeding practice models proposed in old world recent prehistory.

International audience; Un rapide tour d'horizon des publications récentes montre que les bornes chronologiques des différentes phases du Néolithique moyen du Midi de la France semblent se stabiliser autour de quelques dates charnières. Toutefois, dans les meilleurs des cas, ces limites ont été obtenues par la simple observation des distributions de probabilités des âges calendaires issues de calibrations individuelles. Il nous a semblé utile de préciser, de façon transparente, la chronologie du Néolithique moyen en faisant appel à la calibration simultanée bayésienne. La connaissance a priori des relations chronologiques entre les événements d'intérêt (le début et la fin des phases), intégrées dans le processus bayésien de calibration, est de nature chrono-typologique. Elle est issue d'un classement factoriel préalable des ensembles céramiques.

International audience; The microscopic objects presented by F.O. Freitas and P.S. Martins as ‘recrystallized calcite crystals’ and ‘starch grain aggregates’ are both compound crystals, end products of the transformation of plant calcium oxalate crystals into calcite in wood fires. These calcareous silty particles are the major component of the wood ashes familiar to archaeologists. Petrographic microscope remains the more efficient tool for this kind of research.