AXIS 2 - Organizational forms of human communities, population dynamics and demography

The Institute's teams have acquired national and international visibility on certain aspects of this theme, which will be developed with new partners on the Aix-Marseille site in the coming years. Whether LAMPEA, ADES, CCJ or LA3M, the study of settlement dynamics is well established and the federation of forces enables a look to be taken at the long duration of Mediterranean territories, such as Provence and the Alpine arc, Italy, the large western islands (Corsica, Sardinia, Sicily). The framework of the Institute is particularly conducive to the development of cross work with IMBE and CEREGE for the reconstitution of biotic and abiotic environments which constitute the physical framework of the settlements and to cross the transformations of the environments and the evolutions of social and cultural practices (ADES). It is also conducive to collaboration on isotope biochemistry platforms between LAMPEA, the only French laboratory to implement these processes from a food anthropology perspective, and CEREGE in order to test the use of new isotopes for the reconstitution of diets.

It is from this perspective that demography, population dynamics and the anthropology of palaeoenvironment are addressed. From the demography of the Neanderthals to medieval populations, Mediterranean societies are analysed through the integration of classical archaeological or palaeogenetic demographic data into mathematical modelling systems for the production of scenarios that test the relationships between bioclimatic variations, geographical distribution, mobilities and the economic production choices of societies up to recruitment in burial areas. Problems of palaeoenvironmental and socio-economic behaviour of past populations are also addressed using isotope approaches (C, N, S, W).

The dynamics of settlement and land use are also major themes mobilizing a joint analysis of the archaeological record. Going beyond a Mediterranean-centric vision of the spaces of Western Europe beyond a strip of 200 km from the coast, the spatial dynamics of populations, which settle, structure and exploit their territories and terroirs, are addressed using the methods of landscape archaeology and functional ecology.