The GEOPRAS consortium comprises seven partners that have been involved for several years in coastal archaeology. Our programme studies the coastal societies of recent Prehistory (Mesolithic and Neolithic) on the French Atlantic shores in order to understand their social and economic organization and the role they play in broader historical dynamics such as neolithization. Characteristics such as the accumulation of goods through storage, specialised modes of production, and the emergence of a social hierarchy or a sedentary lifestyle are often attributed to these coastal populations, on the basis of ethnographic documents from the last two centuries. However, each of these social manifestations must be described according to regional environmental variables, without evolutionary preconceptions. Our research hypothesis is that environmental dynamics have greatly facilitated certain forms of historical evolution. This encourages us to determine with greater precision the nature of these environmental transformations, then to analyse human networks at the continent-ocean interface. The first task will be to restore the environmental benchmarks. During the Mesolithic and Neolithic periods, most coastal landscapes were radically transformed by the sea-level rise and the associated processes of erosion and sedimentation. The coastal environments of the past will be reproduced through a three-level approach combining a large scale (region) with an intermediate scale (nearby landscape) and a local scale (archaeological site). Our consortium proposes a combination of methods suited to different geographical conditions (dunes, rocky coasts, marshlands) around the Bay of Biscay, testing the limits of several of them. To gain the best possible understanding of an "archaeological signal", the GEOPRAS project will focus on developing rapid intervention and rescue methods for archaeology and geoarchaeology. We intend to apply these methods to sites currently being excavated or whose exploration is planned as part of the project, such as foreshore and marshland sites and shell middens. Optimal integrated methods and procedures will be developed for the recording of archaeological remains, which are often ephemeral on foreshores, as well as for sampling, particularly in shell middens. These procedures include geophysical surveys, archaeozoology, micromorphology, geochemistry, taphonomy, metagenomic approaches, and OSL datings. The second task is to study how human societies have managed the land-sea interface. Shell middens have become the emblematic nodes of these coastal Holocene settlements because they contain an abundance of bio-archaeological data. They will be analysed to judge biodiversity as well as food practices. The third task is to understand the specific features of technical systems in a maritime context, especially seafaring. This technical field is at the heart of all the questions raised about the relationships between coastal areas, as well as the decisive features of the various technical systems developed in these areas. To overcome the lack of knowledge of prehistoric watercraft, we suggest an approach, based on three disciplinary poles in permanent interaction: 1) ethnographic and historical references, 2) technological and use-wear analyses of lithic and bone tools, 3) experimentation. In addition to proposing methodological developments, we aim to lay down the conceptual, methodological and technical foundations of a maritime prehistory with procedures adapted to coastal heritage. The results will be included in a handbook of maritime prehistory, to be published in French and English. The involvement of amateur archaeologists, observers, tourists and other citizens in scientific tasks will be anticipated and coordinated by inviting them to take part in the main scientific meetings and, of course, in field operations such as surveys, excavations and experiments.

The aim of this multidisciplinary project is to study the roughly one hundred ground-floor latrines in the city of Ostia, one of the main cities of the Roman Empire, port and image of Rome, as well as the fifty or so downpipes considered to be evacuations of upper storey latrines. Their study will allow us to understand, through archaeology, all aspects of their architecture. The archaeometric analysis of the samples taken from the stercoral concretions formed at the bottom of the pipes will provide a reliable picture of the sanitary state of the population, but also of its diet and environment. This project is in the continuity of the researches performed on the ancient latrines, which have been revived for the last 20 years. The paleoparasitological analyses, by revealing the presence of digestive parasites, will offer the possibility of discussing the effectiveness of the hygiene measures, implemented by such structures, on the parasitic infections circulating within the population. Palaeomicrobiological analyses will track bacterial and viral pathogens. The filling of latrines will allow the study of the spectra of animal and plant species consumed in different parts of the city as well as their natural environment. The project associates 7 partners with complementary and multidisciplinary skills under the direction of A. Bouet: Ecole française de Rome (E. Bukowiecki), Parco archeologico d'Ostia antica (C. Tempesta), Ausonius (A. Bouet), Laboratoire Chrono-environnement de Besançon (M. Le Bailly), PACEA (O. Dutour), ISYEB (T. Wirth) as well as CReAAH of Rennes (B. Ephrem). Palynology will be performed as service provided by the ARPA Laboratory (J. Argant). This innovative approach carried out on the whole of the Ostia latrines will be a first at the level of a Roman city of the imperial period in the western Mediterranean.

The ALEAM (Atlas of the Landed Estates in Ancient Maghreb) project aims to comprehensively study the large landholdings of ancient North Africa, a region often considered the granary of Rome. We will ask how a world empire became dependent on this one region (along with Egypt) for wheat and why North Africa managed to distinguish itself from the rest through its large agricultural estates. Indeed, according to literary sources, a large part of Africa was occupied by extraterritorial estates, i.e. not belonging to the territories of the cities. If imperial estates have been studied in recent projects, the extraterritorial landed properties of private individuals, which preceded them and with which the imperial property coexisted throughout its history, have never been the subject of a global study. We propose two lines of work in order to fill this gap. On the one hand, we will proceed with the creation of the database that will give rise to the atlas of the landed estates of the ancient Maghreb. It will be based mainly on epigraphic, but also archaeological and literary sources. Its digital structure will be the adaptation of an existing open source software where, in a relational database, records of documents, individuals and sites will be linked, allowing the consultation of objective data. A committee of specialists in African antiquity will follow the work of creating and filling the database/atlas by means of two meetings. On the other hand, we will organise workshops with internationally renowned researchers on four main themes, namely the origin of this African peculiarity and its latest expressions at the end of Antiquity, the organisation of production in large private estates, the role played by women in these estates and the comparison with other regions of the Roman world where large landholdings proliferated.

The ProMeThEuS project aims to study the measurement practices in Europe during the Bronze and Iron Ages (c. 2200/-50 BC) based on archaeological and literary sources. During this period, practices and institutions whose functioning implies the use of numbers and measures, appear: trade, urbanisation or even money. Among the measurement systems, only weighing has been the subject of in-depth studies and today allows a good characterisation from the Middle Bronze Age (c. 1600-1400 BC). Within the framework of the ProMeThEuS project, all measurement practices (of mass, length and volume) will be studied in Europe and in a broad diachronic context, from their appearance until the Roman period. This research will rely heavily on digital humanities. The data, of very varied natures, will be organised thanks to a dedicated database. The use of 3D digitalisation and modelling will be used to facilitate and improve the acquisition of metrological data. Finally, mathematics and statistics will be used to process this data from a metrological point of view. This is therefore a highly transdisciplinary project and the results of the ProMeThEuS project will make it possible to largely renew our knowledge on the use of numbers and measurements in Protohistoric Europe. Our representations of socio-economic practices and institutions will be significantly transformed and enhanced.

Previous research has blamed the Romans for the decline of the Egyptian temples. The current view, however, is that Rome played a stimulating role on the Egyptian economy. Against this background the temple in Dimê is particularly suitable to explore the economic situation of an Egyptian temple under the Roman administration of a province and to test the new perception. On the one hand the documentation in Greek and Egyptian is extremely abundant in general, on the other hand the sources elucidating the business life of the temple in particular, among them at first rank the accounts have survived in great numbers. The temple's accountancy produced these lists in demotic script of which just the better preserved scrolls of more than 1 m length sum up to 800 pieces. Their analysis will force us to revise our picture : - of the internal economic structure of a regional Egyptian temple; - of the integration of the 'temple' as an administrative and economic centre into the Roman administrative and fiscal strategy in Egypt; - of the clergy as a community and its social status, and - of the religious practice in Dimê and the neighbouring sanctuaries. The considerable number of sources in Egyptian Demotic in a period when Greek finally replaced Demotic as administrative language is another particularity that raises again the issue of bilingualism in Roman Egypt. The project's objective is to make available the unpublished corpus of accounts from the temple in Dimê on an on-line platform for editing texts to scholars of Ancient History and Egyptologists and to put our knowledge and picture of an Egyptian temple's life on a new basis. This will allow us new insights into the Roman regulatory actions facing these indigenous institutions that were highly influential up to the Ptolemaic period. The study of the account scrolls of the temple in Dimê and by this of the financial system, the administration and the priestly economic competences in comparison to the competences and privileges that the Roman central administration granted, will yield new findings concerning the influence of Egypt's integration into the Roman Empire on a traditional Egyptian institution. This research, which is founded on an abundant and largely unpublished corpus, is devoted to a new approach to ancient economy and the ancient financial system.