The uses of timber in Mycenaean architecture and in the palatial architecture of the Neopalatial period in Crete were identified very early on and have been summarised in works devoted to the architecture of these periods: however, it has never been the subject of an overall study or of a comparative approach. The TiMMA project proposes to fill this gap. The objective is to gather in an interactive database all the current data on the presence of wood in the architecture of the Aegean Bronze Age (Greece and Crete) by concentrating the study on a series of selected sites (Pylos, Mycenae and Tirynthe, but also Malia, Phaestos, Zakros and Knossos, as well as Akrotiri on the island of Thera). Directors of each excavation are member of the team. In order to reconstruct as much as possible the wood supply, we will also compile the archaeo-environmental data of these sites, as well as the results of the palynological research in order to approximate the forest cover of the surroundings and the available trees. This work will make it possible to evaluate the structural role of timber (load-bearing system, reinforcement, seismic function or not of the device), thanks to structural calculations and 3D restitutions, reinforced by the use of experimental archaeology on a few buildings chosen among the sites selected for their exemplary nature and the data collected. It will be possible to evaluate the use of wood, to distinguish the borrowings and the specificities of each architecture and to make progress in the comprehension of the relations between Minoans and Mycenaeans. The TiMMA project therefore concerns the history of buildings, the history of techniques and architecture as well as cultural history. The techniques and uses of wood, particularly in Neopalatial Minoan architecture, also provide food for thought regarding the new uses of this material in current eco-construction and particularly the reuse of traditional techniques.

Our project proposes to investigate the data from 1st millennium BC Babylonia to achieve a comprehensive understanding of the material culture. Pride of place will be given to the exceptionally rich textual data, which document objects and manufacturing processes which cannot be recovered from the material remains. The reconstruction of the material culture, defined as the sum total of man- made objects, implies studying the nature of these objects, but also an understanding of the identity and technology of those who made them and investigate how furniture, tools, weapons, etc. were used. Iron Age Babylonia is arguably the earliest period in which the impact of money and markets on production and consumption patterns for consumer goods can be studied. Our working hypothesis is that material culture not only sheds light on the technological changes, but also elucidates the consequences of monetization and wide-spread reliance on market exchange.

In a traditional society, as the Mesopotamian was, in which the producing functions and the management of property are very clearly distributed, women played a fundamental role in the daily life production. In some cases, their role exceeded the primary needs of the family and they carried out an essential part of the production of great institutions. They may have become essential too in the production of luxury goods in the scope of the international trade. Women were also a central element for the preservation and the transmission of property. The cuneiform sources (administrative, legal, economic texts) from Mesopotamia provide us with numerous data about the economic role of women during a very long period, from the end of the Third until the end of the First Millennium B.C. While the women relationship to the labor world changed in a spectacular way in contemporary France and Japan, it seems also interesting to examine how, in a very ancient past, and in a very conservative civilization, we can reconstruct and analyze various aspects and the evolution of the economic role played by women The planned project is based on three themes: 1) The economic role of women in the family sphere (activities, productions, diversification, internal hierarchy); 2) Special systems of production: female work in palatial and religious organizations on the one hand, economic situation of the Assyrian traders' wives and their relationship with their husbands on the other; 3) Women and inheritance: connection between the social situation and the financial autonomy of Babylonian notables' wives and daughters; role of women in the transmission of the private property. Each of these themes will be examined by the Japanese and French participants in this research group, for a span of time over than two millennia of time, according to the available documentation. We plan a scientific workshop every year in each country in spring and automn, also one in Japan, and one in France, and a final colloquium in Paris, giving a synthesis of the workshops. Miss Yoko Wataï, as an experienced researcher, who speak perfectly both Japanese and French, will be more specifically in charge of the gathering, the follow-up and the distribution of the results in France and in Japan, during the duration of the project.

Hunted, eaten, used, large herbivores held a central place for the nomadic hunters-collectors of the European Paleolithic. For nearly 200,000 years, Neandertals lived in changing and varied environments, adapting to sometimes extreme conditions. This huge adaptability of human societies is directly related to the eco-ethological flexibility of their essential resources: animals, especially large and megabivorous - the "BigGame". The BigGame project aims to identify how these changes impacted the fauna consumed and used by ‘super-predator’ Neanderthal societies in the plains of Northern France. A vast archaeological and faunal corpus attests to marked ecological changes there, but the plasticity of the species and the detail of the human responses is largely unknown. BigGame aims to investigate the detail of these processes, over short and long time scales, through different specialties at the interfaces of humanities and geosciences, intending to apply a corpus of methods at the forefront of the latest advances of paleoanthropology and prehistoric archeology, where animal will be examined in the different components of its relationship with Neandertal nomadic hunters. Focusing on the period from MIS 7 to MIS 3 that has seen several glacial / interglacial cycles, and the emergence, development and disappearance of Neandertal cultures, a total of 34 archaeological sites and more than 90 sedimentary levels will be considered in our dataset. By initiating a transversality between the disciplines that deal with material aspects, societies and environmental relationship, the BigGame project intend to address a virgin area of ​​any systemic approach. BigGame is a unique opportunity to bring together recent scientific works and advanced technologies to perform a thorough in-depth investigation of human relationship with its environment. Aiming to bring new lights to the details of the 'super-predator' Neandertal behaviors for most of its chronological expansion. In such, BigGame will be the first large-scale, integrative and systemic study, encompassing different animal taxa throughout the development and disappearance of a fossil human species. The BigGame team is composed of 20 scientists from 11 French laboratories, a private entity and 4 international institutions. Based on long-standing collaborations, BigGame will allow colleagues from different institutional partners to strengthen scientific relationships while creating new research dynamics. The communication and dissemination component will set up new collaborations and student training. Communication and dissemination of the results concerns the scientific community and also the general public.

Understanding the earliest chronology and settlement patterns of the Americas cannot be achieved without studying human-environment past relations. Adapting, moving or even disappearing in response to climate fluctuations are the expected reactions. In order to characterize these different scenarios, SESAME proposes to focus on North-East Brazil, where the human presence has been documented for at least 40,000 years. By reconstructing past climatic and environmental variations in NE Brazil and revealing the cultural and technological identity of past societies, SESAME aims at revealing the evolution of the relationship between people and their environment through Pleistocene and Holocene. This human paleoecological reconstruction will allow, in a comprehensive way, to formulate hypotheses on the potential routes of intracontinental diffusion and implantation. They will be derived from the NE Brazil model and the recontextualization of literature archaeological data into a paleoclimatic scheme on a continental scale.