The “Neolithic way of life" developed in the Caucasus ca. 6200 BCE, which is fairly late when compared with the astonishing steps taken by Near-Eastern cultures in the neighbouring Fertile Crescent as early as the 9th mill. BC. The existence of organic links between the Neolithisation process of the Near-East and that of the Caucasus is still a matter of debate, but the Caucasus no doubt appears as a marginal, backward area in the overall dynamics that shaped part of South-western Asia in the early Holocene. During the following period, i.e. the Chalcolithic, these dynamics seemingly changed completely and South-Western Asia underwent a progressive shift in its centre of gravity: some time ca. the 5th-4th mill. BC, a change in circulation flows appeared in the obsidian procurement strategies of Iranian and north Mesopotamian communities, which started to exploit Caucasian obsidian beds as well, instead of focusing on East Anatolian deposits. This shift in obsidian sourcing networks is coeval with the development of major technical innovations such as extractive copper metallurgy and the production of wool fabrics, which led to the systematic exploitation of a new range of raw materials (salt and metal ores) and probably entailed the appropriation of new territories - the Highlands. At any rate, it appears that Transcaucasia became a major source of attraction for human groups living in Iran, North Mesopotamia and beyond from the Late Chalcolithic onwards (ca. 4500 BCE), as shown by the number of Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age sites found in the Araxes and Urmiah basins. How should these profound, structural, changes be interpreted? The explanation that leaps to mind is of course that major changes in economic flows were prompted by technical innovations. We need to test this hypothesis by breaking down the intricate relationships between the development of these innovations, the quest for raw materials, and the rise of other practices, such as vertical pastoralism or long-distance nomadism. Indeed, innovations, which may be technological or zootechnological, may have involved the migrations and/or increasing mobility of human groups living in the Near and Middle East, as claimed by several studies. But the processes underlying the changes in economic flows are still poorly understood, while the reality of human migrations from the Near-East towards the Caucasus during the 4th mill. BC has been actively challenged. Altogether, it is the agency of Late Prehistoric Caucasian communities that is being debated, between a centre-vs-periphery perspective that considers the Highlands as a mere source of raw materials, exploited by the proto-urban communities of the lowlands, and an analytical stance that places the evolution of the Caucasus within the complexity of Eurasian dynamics in Late Prehistory, which integrates not only the Near and Middle East but also the Pontic universe and the northern steppes. Thus, this project lies at the core of on-going international research on: a) the neolithisation processes of the Caucasus, b) the interactions between the Caucasus and the Near and Middle-East from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age. Considering the state of the art, we have three goals in mind: i) the study of the Caucasian Neolithic, as seen from the Araxes basin, with a special emphasis on its possible connections with the Neolithic communities of the Fertile Crescent; ii) the study of interregional economic networks between the Neolithic and the Bronze Age, in relationship with the emergence of new economic hubs; iii) the study of the human mosaic developing in the Highlands during the 4th mill., with a view to identifying the various cultural groups involved in what appears as a "copper rush".

The aim of the project is to contribute to the understanding of the economic, social, artistic and technological development of the continental part of the Western Latène Culture (mid 5th-1rst centuries BC) through the study of the production and consumption of gold objects. This culture of the Late Iron Age, cross-bordering a large part of the European continent and the British Isles, is characterized by new social and economic dynamics leading to foreign contacts (trade, mercenary, individual mobility…), more precisely with the Mediterranean, and migration phenomena of the Celtic population. The new context is visible through metal working, style and technology. This period is crucial for the development of the Celtic art, which finds its most important expression in gold work. It also marks the starting point of coinage, with new exchange systems and new access to the raw material gold (with minting Greek, Carthaginian, Celtic and finally Roman coins). Apart of the emergence of coin use, furthermore intense gold mining, in particular in the Limousin area, brings an innovative point into gold studies. We intend to study the social dynamics and hierarchies, combined with craft specialization during the Latène period by mainly investigating prestige objects, except coins, from rich burial sites and hoards. Our geographical focus will mainly concern Germany, France and Benelux, but also Switzerland. Fine metal work is especially suitable to reveal traditions and local innovations as well as foreign influences and exchange networks in arts and crafts. It shows the mobility of people, objects and ideas. The strength of the project is in the international collaboration of German and French scientists and in their interdisciplinary excellence in archaeology, archaeometry, technology and experimental archaeology. It is also based on new laboratory equipment allowing innovative high precision observations and material analyses. We intend to take into account all aspects of Late Iron Age fine metal work for the first time: from the raw material, covering the transformation into artefacts, their artistic creation, utilization and distribution, until to the final deposition and finally the archaeological discovery. In addition we take into account coins, in particular those found associated with fine metal work, for their information about material composition, probable raw material provenance and the their economic value. These observations will be integrated into a wider socio-economic and technological context in order to enlighten changes in stylistic traditions and technologies of luxury objects in relation to the socio-economic organization of the Latène period for a discussion of historical, archaeological and theoretical interpretations.

Research on the mobility of the Palaeolithic and Neolithic societies and on cultural changes in Africa often uses deterministic arguments, which put forward the role of climatic changes, in particular the abrupt dry events that have characterized the Pleistocene, with the final cycle of increasing aridity that lead to the end of the green Sahara in the mid-Holocene. Meanwhile, applied models take into account only a part of the continent: West Africa is usually under-represented, suggesting that it had no interaction with the other regions. Most probably, such a misleading assumption of a minimal role of West Africa is not based on a long analysis of data. The obvious reason is that West Africa suffers from a lack of both archaeological and palaeoenvironmental researches. Very few Palaeolithic or Neolithic sites are firmly dated and most of the palaeoenvironmental data rely on marine or lacustrine cores, whose relevance at the regional scale for the studied period remains disputable. Meanwhile, preliminary research conducted in the Falémé Valley, East of Senegal, have shown the potential of this region for allowing joint studies on both new Palaeolithic/Neolithic data and local palaeoenvironmental data. The stratigraphic record in the valley is indeed well preserved, though complex, and preliminary dates (OSL and radiocarbon) show that it covers the whole Upper Pleistocene and Holocene. Silts deposits alternate with coarse channel deposits and the palaeoclimatic significance of this structure needs to be understood. In particular, the sedimentary records attributed to Marine Isotope Stage 2 (MIS2, 24-12 ka), partly contemporaneous with the arid Ogolian (20-12 ka), are well developed and will allow refined studies on this period. Archaeological assemblages are present on the whole stratigraphic sequence and more particularly in the levels with a preliminary MIS2 age. This is important as MIS2 archaeology is very poorly known south of the Sahara: at that time human populations apparently suddenly disappeared, either decimated by the drought, or gathered in hypothetically more favorable refugia. Our project aims thus at performing joint archaeological, palaeoenvironmental and geochronological (OSL and C14) studies on a section (>100 km long) of the Falémé Valley in order to: 1) Establish of a new chrono-cultural framework for the end of the Pleistocene and Early/Middle Holocene in West Africa. When completed this will be compared to the one established at Ounjougou (Mali), 950 km further to the North-East, in a currently drier environment; 2) Track the climatic and environmental changes on the last 70 ka at least. In particular, we will try to understand how the Heinrich events at the end of the Pleistocene and the various droughts of the Early and Middle Holocene have impacted the environment of the valley (i.e., rain, hydrology, aeolian inputs, vegetation) and how they have eventually impacted the human populations (i.e., mobility, technical and cultural changes). Our project, scheduled for 3 years, will rely on the complementary skills of four teams, 2 French and 2 Swiss, that form the consortium, in collaboration with the IFAN (University of Dakar, Senegal): the IRAMAT-CRP2A (CNRS-University Bordeaux-Montaigne, France) in charge of OSL dating, the LGP (CNRS-University Paris-Est Créteil, France) that will realize the palaeoenvironmental studies, the APA (University of Geneva, Switzerland), that will hold the archaeological task, and the IBP (ETH Zurich), will perform radiocarbon dating. The budget comprises 390 k€ HT for the French teams and 468 k€ HT for the Swiss ones.

The archaeology of the Late Pleistocene in southern Africa is entangled between two current scientific perspectives, which address the origin of behavioural modernity on the one side and the origin of San material culture on the other. These two perspectives overlap two successive chronocultural phases that are, respectively, the Middle Stone Age (MSA) and the Later Stone Age (LSA). This succession is viewed as a milestone in the evolution of human populations because it inaugurates the final stage of the hunter-gatherer way of life before the adoption of farming and live-stock. However, the separation between the MSA and the LSA in Africa is an academic and Europeo-centric consensus and frame, inherited from the early 20th century, which contributes to bias our scientific narrative. In our project The MileStone Age, we question the distinctiveness of the MSA and LSA lithic technologies in southern Africa, we challenge the putative scenarios of transitions and we interrogate how the distinction between the MSA and the LSA impacts the rethinking of our evolutionary models. We propose a complete analytical shift and promote a long-term narrative merging both Late Pleistocene MSA and LSA archaeological records. Our project is based as well on a revision of the chronology of the technological expressions that manifest in the region during the Late Pleistocene. Four clusters of sites in three different biomes across southern Africa, dated from marine isotopic stages 5 to 1, will be studied. The first cluster includes the sites of Diepkloof Rock Shelter and Elands Bay Cave in the Western Cape (South Africa); the second cluster includes the sites of Sibhudu and Umbeli Belli in KwaZulu-Natal (South Africa); the third cluster includes the sites of Heuningneskrans and Bushman Rock Shelter in Limpopo (South Africa); and the fourth cluster includes the sites of Pomongwe and Bambata Caves in the Matobo (Zimbabwe). All the sites offer long and rich occupational sequences within finely stratified deposits covering the Late Pleistocene. While some of the excavations are ongoing, most material for dating and lithic studies is already available. Lithic technological comparisons will favour three distinct perspectives: (a) the “chronocultural intervals” will focus on defining the technocomplexes, (b) the “chronocultural contacts” will focus on the scenario(s) of transitions; (c) the “techno-functional attributes” will focus on the innovative lithic tools that develop across southern Africa at different moments in time during the Late Pleistocene. Regarding the dating, two methods will be applied: Optically Stimulated Luminescence dating of sediments and uranium-series dating of biominerals. Both will benefit from recent technological and methodological breakthroughs that intend to go beyond the current state of the art. With regard to the dissemination of our results and in addition to papers and conferences, we intend to organize two main workshops in South Africa with the purpose to present and discuss lithic collections with African students and researchers. The project is scheduled for four years, for a total cost of 436 k€. The IRAMAT-CRP2A will manage the luminescence dating of sediments while the IPREM will be in charge of the U-series dating of biocarbonates. The LAMPEA will organize the lithic technological studies in collaboration with three international partners from the University of Tübingen (Germany), the University of Liège (Belgium), and the University of Cape Town (South Africa). This project relies on three funded excavation projects, thus ensuring access to the samples and sites. It is also embedded within a wide, dynamic and efficient network, including both experienced and young European and African scholars.

This project focuses on the relationships between two regions considered key to understanding major sociopolitical processes in Mesoamerican Highlands: Western Mexico and the Basin of Mexico. The study of the inter-regional social relations is a subject extensively explored by Mesoamerican archaeology, which traditionally relies for this purpose on the similarities between their respective material productions, especially pottery. Since the highlighting of a Tertium Quid in the Mexico Basin associated with Western ceramic traditions during the Early Formative (1000-800 BC), it has been a recurring topic of discussion. However, the nature of these links is still poorly understood because the proposals remain generally based on stylistic correspondences. Therefore, the CHUPICERAM project proposes to renew our comprehension of these relations by fully exploiting the information potential of the ceramic material in a comparative perspective. The project focuses on the Late Formative period (600 B.C. - 250 A.D), which witnessed the development of two cultural cores: Chupícuaro in the Lerma valley (Guanajuato) and Cuicuilco in the Basin of Mexico. During the XXs, stylistics analogies on ceramic materials between these two regions led to diverse interpretations, involving population movements, commercial interactions and political and ideological influences, which often granted Chupicuaro a primal position as a possible area of emigration or as a prominent ceramic production center disseminating its beautiful products over long distances. In order to clarify the nature and intensity of these relationships, CHUPICERAM will focus on the ceramic production processes from the raw materials acquisition strategy to the finished product. The project’s goals are to characterize the technical traditions specific to each region, understand the variations over time, establish and question the links between the different ceramic assemblages and discuss the topic in terms of economic, social and cultural proximity. One of CHUPICERAM's strengths is its willingness to apply a methodical comparative approach based on a representative sampling and integrating recent archaeological assemblages from the Chupícuaro region, and museum collections built up during excavations carried out in the first half of the twentieth century, both in the Chupícuaro region and the Mexico Basin. This is the first time that these different collections will be evaluated following the same analysis framework with high-performance instrumentation adapted to sherds and/or complete objects: techno-stylistic study based on the analytical tool of chaîne opératoire, petrographic and mineralogical characterization, a wide range of chemical analyses and a full set of non-invasive techniques including hyperspectral imaging, X Ray Radiography, 3D Imaging, X-ray fluorescence, visible-infrared light reflectance and Raman. We consider that only the crossing of all these data will make it possible to overcome the limits induced by stylistic analogies. The project brings together archaeologists, museum curators, geologists and specialists in applied physics and analytical chemistry from Mexican and French institutions, who will work on the same sample to answer the same questions. By pooling the French and Mexican expertise, CHUPICERAM is taking up the challenge of bringing to the forefront two still little-known cultures considered to be among the most singular and creative Formative Mesoamerican traditions.