AXIS 3 - Technical systems and material cultures, integrated analytical approaches

The analysis of material culture is at the heart of the archaeological process. Initially based on the concepts of anthropology of techniques from the work of Marcel Mauss or André Leroi-Gourhan, research has gradually invested the fields of individual and collective knowledge and skills, know-how, skills, uses and representations. The fields of economics, the segmentation of activities in time and space, and the economic and political organizations that enable the establishment of production and distribution channels for products are thus addressed. This analysis of material remains is currently benefiting from the significant development of analytical tools relating to geo- and biosciences and modelling. Precise characterization of materials, dating of objects and structures, search for residues and organic remains, non-invasive exploration using different technologies, 3D restitutions, etc. make it possible to document with great precision the different phases of the operating chains and the functional and economic processes. This collaboration between analytical methods and archaeological problems has invaded all periods and all types of remains, from artisanal productions to complex buildings. The AMU laboratories have notably acquired world-renowned expertise in the tracerological analysis of prehistoric technical equipment, Mediterranean ceramics, construction methods and naval architecture.

The Institute provides an intense added value to this work through the development of numerical analyses of material production, the conformation of analytical platforms for a high level of resolution in the characterisation of materials and their uses, and innovations in terms of dating and the functioning of structures and archaeological objects.