VINICULTURE aims to integrate innovative methods in archeosciences to identify the characteristics and the diversity of grapevines and wines produced in France, since the origins of viticulture to the Middle Ages. Wine plays a major social and symbolic role since Protohistory. It is a prized exchange product carried over lost distances. The grapevine became a major plant species in terms of economy, landscape, culture and symbolism. Great progress has been accomplished lately by French archaeology concerning the history of vine cultivation and wine making: the circulation of wine, extension of vine cultivation under roman rule, production sites and techniques, vineyards and plantation practices. Despite this progress, fundamental aspects remain unclear. Our knowledge of the wines available before the Middle Ages derives mainly from written documents of different origins and sparse inscriptions on amphorae. Concerning the vines, written documents are practically unusable, and the first real information has been provided by archaeobotany. We now take advantage of recent methodological advances (Morphogeometry, Next Generation Sequencing) to put forward a holistic approach, no longer considering grapevines and wine as generic categories, but instead describing their diversity and analyzing their spatial and chronological dynamics in France, from the Neolithic to the Middle Ages. France is an excellent area to observe the evolution of vine cultivation and wine making in the long run, making it possible to integrate most of the major Euro-Meditteranean exchanges concerning wine, such as the Phoenician, Greek and Roman colonial movements and cultural changes linked to the spread of Christianity and Islam. France also offers the perfect background to study the diffusion of viticulture from the Mediterranean to temperate Europe and its implications in terms of adaptation and re-composition of the diversity of vines and wine. We will analyze plant remains as well as archaeological containers (pottery and wood jars) collected according to strict sampling procedures. Our approach will combine archaeobotany, geometric morphometrics, archaeogenetics, biochemistry and experimental archaeology. By exploiting the potential of Database I2AF and the national network of collaborations Bioarcheodat, Archaeobotany will provide access to a large data set and supply the indispensable background for the observation of the dynamics of Grapevine and of its use since the Neolithic. The most expensive analyses will be restricted to the most promising sites and to the period Bronze Age – Middle Ages. Ancien DNA and Morphometry will provide the means to identify the traits of cultivated grapevines (colour, productivity) and their parenthood with wild grapevines and modern cultivars. As a result, it will be possible to enquire about the geographic origins of the archaeological varieties, to trace the pathways of diffusion and evolution mechanisms. Archaeogenetics and Biochemistry applied to the study of wine jars will provide evidence on the type of wines: of grapes and/or of other fruits, colour, use of additives for aroma and conservation. The role of yeast and bacteria in the fermentation process and in wine conservation will be taken in consideration for the first time. Statistics and models, will allow us to combine data obtained at different levels of analysis, with the information provided by other archaeological sources and by the modern genetic diversity of grapevine and microorganisms, aiming at reconstructing the geo-historical dynamics of vines and wines, in relation to environmental and socio-economic changes.

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".

Zooarchaelogists have been trying for a long time to document the early step of animal domestication in the archaeological record but this has been proven a difficult task. Zooarchaeologists use morphological markers based on experiments focused on behavioural selection that led to the genetic divergence of the domestic stock. However, during the very first steps of the domestication process, it is unlikely that such processes already acted to build an observable phenotypic divergence. Another, most often neglected process may nevertheless have played a role in these early steps of domestication: namely plastic, non heritable phenotypic modifications due to changes in life style. How this kind of early response to domestication may have play a role in favouring, and possibly orienting the later genetic differentiation of domestic stocks, is an important issue for both understanding the pace and processes of the domestication process in ancient societies and the evolutionary role of plasticity. The geometry and inner architecture of limb bones will reflect the biomechanical changes in loading regimes associated with changes in lifestyle and physical activities. Therefore, the reduction of mobility associated with captivity at the onset of domestication should be detectable in the animal bone micro and macrostructure and used as proxy for the early stage of the domestication that can be traced in the archaeological record. Biomechanical analysis has been widely used in the field of physical anthropology to assess the lifestyle of past population but theses have rarely and only partially been investigated with respect to animal domestication. With the rapid advances in high resolution 3D images acquisition, and morphometric techniques to analyse these 3D objects, time has come for zooarchaeology to pursue this promising research avenue in order to identify new anatomical indicators of human control over animals directly applicable to its biological archives. To investigate the biomechanical consequences on internal and external structure of the skeleton imposed by the captive environment, DOMEXP will use an experimental approach through the creation of the first wild boar (Sus scrofa) farm experiment dedicated to the simulation of the domestication process. Using different experimental treatments and functional constraints (free range, outdoor limited mobility and indoor reduced mobility) morphometric investigation will rely on skeleton markers apt to investigate functional changes caused by a reduction in mobility: limb long bones (femur, tibia, humerus), and tarsal bones (calacaneus, talus), both strongly involved in locomotion and often found complete in archaeological record. The muscular and skeleton changes during the growth of the animals will be captured with in vivo longitudinal 3D CT and MRI scans. The latest advances in 3D biomechanical and geometric morphometric analysis will then capture and decode the signature of lifestyle variation imprinted in the external and internal structural morphology. The experimental characterization of this phenotypic signature will then be used as proxy to infer the life style/behaviour of Neolithic series of Sus scrofa. This research action will rely on a real multidisciplinary interaction between fields of functional ecology, evolutionary biology, functional skeletal anatomy, and bioarchaology to achieve an original approach towards a better understanding of the early steps of domestication. The results will also contribute to ongoing discussions about the role of developmental plasticity in the evolution of new phenotypes and will provide unique insights into the cause, pace and amount of phenotypic variation that can be achieved when facing radically new environmental conditions.

The Notre-Dame de Paris (NDP) wooden oak frame is one of the greatest masterpieces of Gothic carpentry in France. It was constructed during the High Middle Ages (HMA) between the 11th and 13th centuries, at a time of profound environmental and societal changes – climate optimum, strong demographic and economic growth – which created significant pressure on available forest resources, one of the key economic drivers of medieval societies. The destruction of the NDP wood framework in the fire of 15 April 2019 left thousands of charred and fragmented oak wood pieces. Analyzing this "forest" means to almost go back in time, by rebuilding the forests of past centuries and restoring this heritage for the public. The CASIMODO project aims to understand the impact of climatic and anthropogenic factors on the evolution of the HMA forest–wood socio-ecosystem: forest, raw wood material management, and manufactured end products in the Île-de-France and Paris Basin. The project proposes three lines of research to address society’s adaptive response to the availability of wood resources during the HMA. The first purpose is to define the climatic and the socio-economical context of Paris. In order to identify the potential technical adaptations of the medieval society, the second objective is to study the timber and destroyed framework from an archaeological point of view in order to characterize the construction supply methods of the building site. The third purpose consists of characterizing the forest stands exploited in the 11th–13th c., their management, and the possible silvicultural systems used for the production of adequate timber. The overall goal of CASIMODO is to provide crucial information and enable a fuller understanding of the evolution of an economic area under climatic, societal and demographic pressure, through the wood life cycle. We propose to develop an integrated approach by combining history, archaeology and bioarchaeology. Trees record variations in environmental variables, with each annual growth ring containing a means of dating, and a set of anatomical and chemical markers indicators providing information of the woodland structure, the geographical origin of the wood, and past climate. This information will be compared with contemporaneous wood data from secular and religious medieval frames from Northern France, Southern Belgium and Western Germany. Complementary proxies, such as textual archives and paleoenvironmental/bioarchaeological data of medieval archaeological sites in the Île-de-France and Paris Basin will also be integrated. By echoing the context of the current ecological threat, this project addresses recurring problems in human–nature relations and is in line with the theme of societies facing environmental change. Improved documentation of temporal and spatial variability in past global climates is needed to better anticipate the possible impacts of future climate change. CASIMODO can provide indirect clues on the extent of deforestation or even natural disasters and linked epidemics such as the plague. In addition, radiocarbone dating is a central tool of modern science (biology, ecology, geology, history, archaeology.); however, it is still hampered by the imprecision of dates obtained for certain periods. Progress in this direction will, therefore, be a major step forward for very large section of the scientific community

During the classic period (AD 250-950), the Maya interacted with many neighboring cultures, however, little is known about their interactions with more distant societies. Important quantities of iron ore mirrors and jade plaques, associated with the Maya elites, were thus found in Costa Rica some 1000 km away (AD 300-700). In the Maya area, Spondylus shells were often found in elite burials, but are absent from the Pacific coasts close to this area and abundant in the waters bordering Costa Rica. This project proposes to bring together archaeologists, archaeometers, traceologists and archaeozoologists to determine the areas of origin of these prestigious goods and to understand the nature and modalities of the relations between these regions. We will review all the available archaeological data on the studied objects in order to document their contexts and chronological frameworks. The study of their provenance will involve the chemical analyses of the stones and adhesives by a set of spectroscopic, chromatographic, datation and isotopic techniques. The manufacturing microtraces of stones will be characterized using traceology in order to understand the lapidary techniques and to determine whether they were imported or locally worked. Spondylus materials found in the Maya area will be submitted to malacological and isotopic analyses in order to distinguish their geographic sources. The iconographic and epigraphic study of the corpus of plaques and mirrors will enable us to document their origin, date and status in the Maya area. Finally, all data will be cross-referenced by being placed in geographic and chronological contexts in order to understand the distributions, productions, reuse and functions of these goods in the two regions. This project will enable us to rethink the old distinctions between what is called Mesoamerica and what is often considered as an "intermediate area" in order to define the entities composing them in a far more dynamic fashion.