Héritages et actualités

1. THЙORIE DU MONDE

Version papier Sommaire Livre complet 1,5 Mo Haut de page. Le Guen Prise d'iode stable en situation d'urgence P. Aspects environnementaux de l'accident de Tchernobyl H. Version papier Sommaire Livre complet 1 Mo Haut de page. Version papier Sommaire Livre complet 0,6 Mo Haut de page.

Laïcité, laïcités - Éditions de la Maison des sciences de l’homme

Les accidents de fusion du coeur Didier Jacquemain Collection: Version papier Sommaire Livre complet 4,5 Mo Haut de page. Version papier Sommaire Livre complet 3,2 Mo Haut de page. Version papier Livre complet 0,6 Mo Haut de page. Archaeologists must make the effort to organize their information in standardized and easily accessible classification series.

This work revealed not only that they were more numerous during Antiquity than after, but also that their periodization testified to phases of development and decline.

Through a detailed recording of 4, homes in 46 villages, he discovered a slow demographic increase in the 1st century, particularly marked between and , followed by a sharp decline. There was a recovery between and , then another decline that stopped suddenly at the beginning of the 7th century. So, although taken from a limited region, these are the figures that we were missing for tracing the population curve. This dietary improvement can also be seen through the increase in human stature estimated from the femurs of skeletons found in tombs.

The figures follow an increase in size during the 1st century BC to the 1st century AD, then a levelling out in the 2nd century and a decrease from the 4th century. We must multiply this classification for all economic activities, at the same time as quantifying, for example, the number and the capacity of the oil or wine presses, fermentation jars, the number of workshops for each type of artisanal activity, the number of seeds in the sediments, etc.

These are the classifications that make the archaeological remains useful to historians. To share knowledge spread between different countries requires a communal database co-managed by several research organizations in Europe and countries bordering the Mediterranean. In countries where there are few archaeological remains or objects, as in northern Europe, everything is systematically counted.

But in countries such as Italy, Greece and North Africa, the abundance and quality of the discoveries creates an imbalance in favour of towns, sanctuaries, necropoles, and aristocratic residences, as opposed to the countryside, modest residences, and economic infrastructures.

It is apparent across northern Europe and the Mediterranean, but especially evident in North Africa and the Near East, where there is more destruction but limited archaeological resources to explore and save, where possible, the most spectacular ruins, and mosques, for example, are favoured to the detriment of workshops or slave quarters. For a long time, archaeological research has been carried out on public and religious monuments, on palaces and wealthy residences and aristocratic tombs. What is more, the social and academic recruitment of archaeologists has influenced interest in particular types of documentation.

Epigraphy, sculpture, painting, architecture and urbanism have been the main fields of study at the expense of the tools of production and the vehicles of commerce, perpetuating an antiquated mental attitude. Unlike literary texts that present an external and often aristocratic view of work and technology, 48 and better than epigraphy which shows mainly what people wanted us to remember about them, 49 archaeology puts us in contact with the work itself, agricultural exploitation, workshops, production sites and trade.

Just as archaeology can reveal basic phenomena such as development, stability and decline, equally it can provide minute details: Until about BC the land was mainly used as pasture. In the following half century, the territory was divided into equal plots, and groups of small farms took root. What can we conclude from this? Firstly, that there was an increase in population; next that poor citizens had gained enough power to impose this division and that, from BC, the number of farms and tombs declined.

No texts mention this phenomenon. This is a clear example of the benefits of interrelating detailed analyses and calls for more groups of specialists to do analyses from pollen, to dendrochronological or 14 C dating, to quantities of 13 C in bones for tracing paleo-diets, to analyses of the evolution of pollution from lead to leather, to the identification of the contents of wine or perfume containers using organic chemistry. The list goes on, according to our appetite for knowledge, but it is also extending on account of lower costs thanks to the automation of procedures, which makes them affordable for humanities laboratories.

We have moved from little to an overabundance of data, which are beginning to be classified in series. Links are being established between them and we can now shift our attention from general to very specialized domains. International collaborations are being organized. New questions are emerging. However, to exclude amateur researchers from archaeological work is a mistake in two respects, as we would deprive ourselves of people of good will, informants, and of manual and intellectual workers in a world where manpower is expensive.


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Above all, this would cut citizens off from research. And so, interrelating disciplines and joining forces with the public are essential if we do not want science to be divorced from the social body that finances it. Archaeologists in particular need links with citizens to touch politicians, who will only take heritage into account if we can mobilize a significant section of the population to defend it.

I mentioned above the reorganization that was brought about by the arrival of an increased number of professionals. Here they will find a platform for presenting their recent discoveries. Archaeologists also need to forge links with analytical scientists, chemists, biologists, zoologists, and physicians whose expertise is fundamental for reconstructing economic and environmental activities, the health of ancient populations, and so on.

To unite these disciplines, which remain separate in the academic tradition, will be an important priority. What questions would we like to ask of this new documentation? The archaeologist is not passive in his choice of fields of study and observation. He recognizes what he knows, what intrigues him in accordance with his own culture. They look at population, illness, food, economy, technology, environment and climate. I personally concentrate on the study of production, an essential element that embraces the infrastructure of society and reconstructs the remains left by ordinary people who have neither the power nor the culture to provide written evidence.

Such studies compensate for the permanent bias present in history that favours those in power and the marginal groups occupied with economic activities such as the dazzling trade in luxury goods. We must therefore strive to counterbalance the weight of the upper levels of society by studying the rural and urban masses in their productive role. Growth in Antiquity, as today, is the fruit of a clear evolution of the population, of its well-being and education, which we can glimpse through settlements, places and forms of work, food and sanitation.

This is how they are modelled. Epidemics, war, famine and their joint impact on populations were the main vehicle of the economy and the evolution of technology. There is no development that is not demographic.

Techniques and Economies in the Ancient Mediterranean

The phases of expansion and decline are in fact written into the soil by the multiplication or the abandonment of workshops, settlements and, in conjunction with this, cemeteries. Today, archaeologists are also interested in human bones, for measuring their size, tracing mortality curves and identifying pathologies. Looked at in this way, the excavation of cemeteries, and in particular ossuaries, provides an irreplaceable body of documentation. This discovery, now followed by others, changed our perception of the importance of this illness, previously considered to have come from America on the return of Christopher Columbus.

From , a team of anthropologists set about clearing a mound of skeletons from the catacombs of Saints Marcellinus and Peter in Rome: These advances do not answer all our questions; we would also like to know the quality of the workforce and its forms of exploitation, traceable through the study of the bone pathologies and deficiencies. The initial growth of states in Antiquity is a consequence of war.

The question is, was war necessary for growth in Antiquity, as Finley believed, or could growth have been independently created and maintained? Either war was necessary for growth and, with the establishment of the Empire and the ending of the endemic state of war, the final winner, Rome, dominated the Mediterranean and reached the limits of any possible further expansion. With no basis for internal growth, because of the social structures, decline set in.

This growth, accompanied by demographic growth, was stopped towards the end of the 2nd century by a series of epidemics that would have had the same dire consequences on the economy and the fate of the empire as those of the black death of on the economy of Middle Age Europe. How did the ancients operate organic and non-organic sources of energy?

The northern edge of the Mediterranean was well forested and without doubt their exploitation as a source of fuel aided the development of industries that used fire, such as iron production. In this respect, the multiplication of archaeological discoveries has brought about a change of perspective. I will present, starting this year, the results of the watermill excavations I carried out in France and in Italy, and I will review other discoveries that have multiplied over the last few years due to emergency excavations.


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However, these philosophical views have been extended to society as a whole. There must be a method of diffusion, such as individual or collective migration, some sort of apprenticeship or knowledge through written sources. There must also be clear benefits in the relationship between the investment, the work and the output. Technology cannot be adopted if it involves too much investment or a very specific type of technology, or if the benefits of the growth of production are cancelled out by additional taxes or rent.

There must also be an increase in demand in proportion to the output, and thus a population increase, principally urban, an improvement in the organization of commerce, connectivity and transportation. It is the moment of that diffusion that matters and the extent of its impact on the economy. We have for a long time stated that the Romans only expanded and adapted inventions from the Hellenistic east.

But the debate must be widened: Their general use, probably by the managers of the Roman army, 70 changed the means of transporting solid and liquid goods for centuries.

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Looking at the case of wooden barrels, their spread from the 1st century AD changed our perception of the history of viticulture. Until now, amphorae counts were used to define production zones, the destinations for commercial wine, and the growth and decline of particular vineyards. A barrel that could be reused, without any special local characteristics specific to the wood, provides little evidence: Another invention, blown glass, was widely used from the 1st century AD but has deprived archaeology of evidence for the perfume trade, which was in operation from the 8th century BC: We are currently trying to define the fluctuations of these products in the Mediterranean basin, as has recently been done for Gaul.

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