In several regions of Western Europe, the end of the Pleistocene witnessed a recomposition of biocenoses through the replacement of cold and steppe species by so-called temperate fauna. This process did not have the same rhythm, nor the same impacts, according to North-South and East-West gradients. Between 14500 and 11000 cal. BP, while the Iberian Peninsula shows by example the maintenance of a temperate biocenosis throughout the period, a recomposition occurs in particular in Atlantic France and further north, on the shores of the future English Channel, we observe a persistence of periglacial species in the beginning of the Holocene. At the same time, the technical, social and symbolic behaviors inscribed in the equipment and graphic expressions evolve. Rapid climatic and environmental changes most likely had varying impacts on the technical, economic, and graphic interaction patterns between human communities and certain elements of the environment. The TAIHA project "Le Tardiglaciaire dans l’Arc Atlantique : Interactions techniques, socio-économiques et graphiques entre communautés Humaines et Animales durant la transition Pléistocène-Holocène (14500 – 11000 cal BP) " aims to interrogate this variability of techno-economic and graphic behaviors at the interface between human and animal communities. On the scale of the Atlantic Arc, the space studied here benefits from a longitudinal and latitudinal gradient of climatic variations and biocenoses. On a macro-regional scale (comparison of four subsets: northwestern Spain, western half of France and England), the confrontation of human behaviors and other environmental data makes it possible to question spatial variations and arrhythmias that need to be interpreted in the light of more precise local records. It is at the scale of the sites that it becomes possible to apprehend more precisely the spatio-temporal dynamics of these changes. The project thus aims for the first time to decompartmentalize disciplines. For this, it will be a question of combining petro-archaeological, techno-typological and use wear studies of lithic and bone tools and hunting weapons, involved in the acquisition and transformation of animals, but also archaeozoological analyses and paleoecological analyses with the study of graphic expressions. 14C dating on species or objects targeted in a controlled stratigraphic position will make it possible to calibrate the events described in time and synchronize human occupations with the global environmental framework. The corpus is composed of nine key sites spread from England to Spain. They correspond either to open-air occupations or to caves and shelters whose archaeostratigraphic reliability is already, or will be within the framework of the project, controlled by means of taphonomic approaches. The key sites will be the subject of in-depth analyses of lithic and bone elements, but also of decorated pieces. More targeted analyses will be carried out on several sites for which work has already been carried out on certain records. Finally, other sites will be consulted in the form of diagnostics, particularly in the context of methodological and taxonomic discussions. The corpus is composed of 9 key sites spread between England and Spain which will be studied in an exhaustive way and 40 comparison sites will feed the project thanks to studies of targeted registers (lithic analysis, bone industry, fauna, mobile art...) or collective diagnoses on certain specific questions. The TAIHA project will allow the consolidation of a network of researchers already involved but never gathered around the questioning of the different modalities of Human-Environment interaction. The scientific group mainly brings together archaeologists, specialists in lithic industries, bone industry and graphic behavior. These members, who come from various institutions, will be brought together within two partners: UMR 5199 PACEA in Bordeaux and UMR 7264 CEPAM in Nice.

The aim of the LINK project is to better understand the cultural and biological processes underlying the transition from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age in South-western France by conducting a fully integrated study including archaeology, C14 datation, anthropology and genomics. This period is marked by diversity and evolution of funerary places with both collective burials in cave and dolmens and individual burials in open-air pits. By targeting human remains originating from key regions localized between the Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts and dated between 3000 and 1300 B.C, we will study the direct confrontation of ancient groups’ cultural and genetic diversities to uncover the role played by migration, admixture and acculturation in the diffusion of new cultures. At the local communities’ level, this multidisciplinary approach will provide major information regarding the identities of the deceased and its implication in the funerary practices organisation or funerary sites’ structuration.

In the context of an ongoing mass extinction event, wild animals are now facing the double challenge imposed by direct human alteration of their habitat as well as the indirect consequences of climate change. While research on modern populations provides data on the impact of human land use and how to compensate for it, the response of large mammals to climate change is harder to grasp and subsequently predict without a deep-time perspective. Nevertheless, the palaeontological and archaeological records provide a unique window of opportunity for researchers seeking to investigate the response of wild animals and human populations to environmental change in the long-term. The Palaeolithic is an invaluable source of insight into human – animal – environment interactions, as it provides a deep time perspective of human resilience in the face of changing resources, environmental risk, and catastrophe. In this vein, the DeerPal project hopes to acquire new fundamental knowledge on the palaeoecology of animal communities faced with major and rapid climate changes, as well as increase our understanding of how human societies coped with these changes in the past. It focuses on the history of two large mammal species, reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) and red deer (Cervus elaphus), during the Late Pleistocene epoch, prior to the advent of agriculture, when these animals were key resources to hunter-gatherer groups. At a crossroads between archaeology and palaeoecology, the DeerPal project goals are twofold: 1) To document past variability in reindeer and red deer ecological niches and behaviours and test whether variability is higher than what can be inferred from current highly anthropised ecosystems, thus providing a more complete vision of cervid ecology through an evolutionary study of their past adaptations to natural habitats. 2) To carry out a deep-time retrospective study on the impact of climatic changes on two wild mammal species that were central resources to hunter-gatherer societies, and thus provide a necessary backdrop for understanding the scale of climate changes and resource variability that human groups had to adapt to, before altering wild animal habitats. To achieve its objectives, the DeerPal project will test, for the first time, the large-scale and simultaneous application of four state-of-the-art analytical techniques (dental microwear texture analysis, stable isotopic studies, cementochronology and 3D morphometric methods) for archaeological assemblage analysis in order to better describe the past ecology and ethology of prey communities. This integrated perspective will allow us to more fully explore human – animal – environment interactions during the Palaeolithic. Two archaeological periods with significant environmental and cultural shifts were selected for study, corresponding to two distinct research angles: the long sequences of the Middle Palaeolithic of southwestern France, for a diachronic approach, and Late Glacial sites from the Pyrenees to the Paris Basin, for a large biogeographical perspective on the response of past cervid communities to climate warming. Run by three French partner institutions with complementary equipment and expertise (TRACES - University of Toulouse Jean Jaurès, PACEA - University of Bordeaux, and Biogéosciences - University of Bourgogne Franche-Comté), the DeerPal project forms an interdisciplinary consortium that includes palaeoecologists, archaeologists and geochemists from 6 countries and 11 institutions. Specific public outreach activities will provide novel perspectives on the impact of environmental change on humans in the past to the public, dispensing a much-need historical perspective relative to what lies in our collective future.

The common conservation strategy of decorated caves focuses on maintaining a stable underground microclimate with time. Cave paintings are generally situated at a rock/thin water film/atmosphere interface that should remain as constant as possible. The current environmental monitoring of shallow decorated caves (< 40 m) reveals (i) a general increase of underground temperatures that can be significantly accentuated (up to 2°C per decade) by a change in the cave internal aerology; (i) an increase of CO2 level in the ambient cave atmosphere that sometimes limits the access to the cave. These two processes, related to the anthropogenic climate change, destabilize the thin water film that covers cave paintings (growth by condensation that may wash out the paintings, or evaporation with formation of carbonate concretions). A supplementary risk amplified by a change in the cave internal aerology, is the rapid propagation of microorganisms that can cause huge crises in decorated caves. Based on the detailed studies of three decorated caves with contrasted geographical settings (Gargas cave, Points cave, and Villars cave), this project aims at identifying the tipping points that may lead to an alteration (physical and/or biological) of cave paintings. It relies on (i) an innovative environmental survey in the caves (thickness of the thin water film, CO2 production in soil, drip rate measurements, identification and counting of airborne and wall microorganisms...); (ii) a combined modelling of cave microclimate and thermal/fluids transfer through the soil/epikarst/karst system, that will allow the use of meteorological parameters generated by down-scaled versions of climate change scenarios. This project will define an innovative conservatory approach to protect intangible cultural heritage in the context of climate change (measurement instrumentation, appropriate diagnostic tools, management of surface land...).

Despite their profound impact on our society and health, little is known about past pandemics and the causes of their exceptional mortality. Host-pathogen interactions are of paramount importance to disease emergence, but the respective role of microbial virulence and host susceptibility factors in past pandemics is ill-defined, limiting the prevention of contemporary outbreaks. The Black Death, caused by the plague bacterium Yersinia pestis, was one of the most devastating pandemics in European history, resulting in the death of 30–60% of its total population from 1347 to 1352. Several factors have been proposed to explain such a catastrophic mortality, including microbial virulence factors or vector expansion, but archaeological evidence supports none of these scenarios. The MORTUI project hypothesizes instead that the massive mortality of the Black Death was primarily due to host susceptibility of Europeans to Y. pestis infection during the Middle Ages. To test this hypothesis, we will take advantage of recent methodological advances in ancient DNA research and archaeo-anthropology to conduct a detailed epidemiological study of Black Death, based on the archaeological record. We will obtain 200 whole genomes of suspected victims of the Black Death and of controls from the post-Black Death medieval population, and estimate their sex, age, pre-existing health conditions and socio-economic status, based on archaeo-anthropological, epigenetic and genetic markers. The genome-wide association study of victims and survivors of the Black Death, combined with the inferred demographic data, will identify genetic and non-genetic factors that affected human susceptibility to Y. pestis infection during the Middle Ages. The MORTUI project also hypothesizes that genetic resistance to plague has been under positive selection in Europeans since the Black Death, resulting in differences in the prevalence of immune-related disorders between present-day human populations. To test this second hypothesis, we will compare the ancient genomes of victims of the Black Death with those of the present-day European population, and search for direct genetic evidence of natural selection due to the Black Death. We will determine if genetic risk to plague has decreased with time more than expected under neutrality, supporting polygenic selection for plague resistance since the Middle ages. We will also test if genetic risk for plague correlates with genetic risk for chronic inflammatory and auto-immune disorders, which would provide direct evidence that natural selection by the Black Death has increased the prevalence of immune disorders affecting present-day Europe. We expect the MORTUI project to determine, for the first time, if pre-existing health status and human genetic susceptibility contributed to the catastrophic mortality of the Black Death, which may improve epidemiological knowledge required to predict future outbreaks. Furthermore, the project will identify genes and biological functions that participated in the human susceptibility to Y. pestis infection, which may facilitate disease prevention in a context of plague re-emergence. The project will also evaluate new genetic, epigenetic and anthropological markers of health obtained from the archaeological record, which will open new avenues for future epidemiological studies of past pandemics. Finally, the MORTUI project will provide a detailed genomic map of loci that have evolved rapidly in Europe since the Middle Ages, which will improve understanding of the evolutionary arms race between the human host and pathogens, and its consequences on human health.