Holocene land cover and population dynamics in Southern France

Abstract

HAL is a multidisciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of scientific research documents, whether they are published or not. The documents may come from teaching and research institutions in France or abroad, or from public or private research centers. L'archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, émanant des établissements d'enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés.

Depositional environments and historical contamination as a framework to reconstruct fluvial sedimentary evolution

“…Its catchment covers 98 500 km² -of which 90 500 km² are in France-and its average inter-annual discharge is approximately 1 700 m 3 s -1 at the estuary. It has a long history of human influence and the earliest traces of agriculture along the river date back to around 7 500 years ago (Berger et al 2019). As most major rivers in Europe, the Rhône is highly engineered, with numerous dikes, groynes and 19 dams along its French course.…”

Middle Neolithic farming of open-air sites in SE France: new insights from archaeobotanical investigations of three wells found at Les Bagnoles (L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue, Dépt. Vaucluse, France)

“…According to several authors (Delhon et al 2009;Beeching and Brochier 2011, pp 146-150), the expansion of farming before 4000 bc may be due to a climatic stabilisation. Conversely, several hypotheses have been proposed for the period after 4000 bc, such as increased soil erosion due to the possible human use of fire or natural fires; or a period of global cooling and hydrological changes (Magny and Haas 2004;Delhon et al 2009, p 62) along with a regional demographic decline (Beeching 2002;Berger et al 2019). At this juncture, a site with excellent preservation of archaeobotanical remains brought a new perspective to the existing dataset.…”

European agricultural terraces and lynchets: from archaeological theory to heritage management

“…Whilst these particular demographic hypotheses remain open for testing; it is clear that terracing is another potential indicator of population density along with houses and settlement size, and is potentially superior to demographic proxies such as summed probability density (SPD) of radiocarbon dates. Radiocarbon derived demographic (SPD) models are now more sophisticated and appear to be producing data that is not only of high utility, but fits with other data on settlement expansion and contraction in the Mediterranean (Roberts et al 2019;Weiberg et al 2019;Bevan et al 2018;Berger et al 2019). Terracing must also be seen in relation to local social and political control manifest through land ownership, tenurial arrangements and taxation.…”