Sessions > Round table

Round table:From Quaternary Geology to Geoarchaeology, from project design to result dissemination: where are we now?

Coordination: Cécile Germain-Vallée (DRAC-SRA Normandie, CReAAH), Axel Beauchamp (Direction de l'archéologie du Pas-de-Calais, CReAAH), Guillaume Jamet (Inrap Grand Ouest, LGP), Mathieu Rué (Paléotime, ASM)

Keywords: geoarchaeology, pre-development archaeology, paleoenvironment, Pleistocene, Holocene, risk assessment and excavation project design, feedback, planning, dissemination, data repositories

For more than twenty years, the community of geoarchaeologists in France has continued to grow and strengthen alongside rescue archaeology. A wide variety of geomorphological and chronological contexts have been investigated and many research themes developed. These focus in particular on the detection and formation of sites, the co-evolution of environments and past societies or the origin of mineral raw materials. The dispersal of this community working within public or private archeological organizations, including university research structures or the CNRS, does not always facilitate the sharing and exploitation of field data, the pooling of tools, skills or data repositories. This round table will provide, for the first time, an opportunity for inter-institutional exchanges. on the themes that structure the activity of geoarchaeologists, from the project design of rescue excavations to the valorization of the data produced. Two main workshops will be organized:

Workshop 1 – Operational continuity in geoarchaeology: feedback and methodological developments.

Papers can assess or give an overview of experiences in geoarchaeology, presenting, for example, difficulties encountered, methodological advances, the question of human and analytical resources, at whatever stage in the rescue archeological chain of operations. They can also discuss new types of field projects, such as the restoration of ecological continuity of rivers or interventions in the context of coastal erosion, and ways in which they can be optimized.

Workshop 2 – Management and enhancement of geoarchaeological data: from the integration of field data to paleo-environmental data repositories

In this workshop, papers will discuss the exploitation of data acquired in rescue contexts, as in that of research programs. Subjects can include tools used to centralise and exploit information in order to create local or regional overviews or summaries (database, GIS, etc.). At the very end of the operational chain, the future of samples will also be discussed, such as thin sections or ecofacts which should be, like archaeological artefacts, archives to be preserved for the use of future research.