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 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

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.

The multidisciplinary MICA project aims to assess the impact of climatic variations on crop productivity (wheat, barley, millet, grapevine, olive) and their influence, in interaction with social factors, on the transformation of agrarian economies and agrobiodiversity. MICA focuses on four areas of interest in Western Europe and the Mediterranean, over a multi-millennial period between the Bronze Age and the end of Roman times (2000 B.C. - 600 A.D.), which underwent major agricultural changes, some of which associated with key economic developments (onset of olive growing, viticulture, cereal trade, etc.). The complexity of the questions that underlie this project requires the implementation of innovative research which integrates various disciplinary fields: archaeobotany, paleogenomics, spatial archaeology, agronomy, paleoclimatology and modelling. The various methods employed are the build-up of archaeobotanical and archaeological databases, the realization of morphometric, palaeogenomic and isotopic analyses on plant remains, as well as the analysis of multidisciplinary data by geostatistical methods and modelling (agroecosystemic modelling, Multi-Agent Systems). The investigation will focus on four geographical areas selected for their archaeological and archaeobotanical potential, distributed along a north-south transect, in environmentally and climatically varied regions: the Paris Basin, Mediterranean France, south-eastern Spain (Andalusia, Valencia region) and Morocco. Beyond agriculture, the primary source of food and wealth before the industrial revolution, the challenge of MICA is 1) to achieve a better understanding of the impact of climate on demographics and the economy, 2) to identify the adaptations and choices made by societies to ensure the resilience and transformation of production systems.

ArkaeoAG aims at tracing the origin and spread of Agriculture during the Holocene as a major process in the socio-economic structuring of modern civilization. To reach this objective ArkaeoAG brings specialists in paleogenomics, evolutionary biology, archaeobotany, carpology and palaeoecology in studying wheat (Triticum spp.) remains preserved in sediments. From 65 referenced archaeological sites delivering access to 88 assemblages of wheat grain and bread remains from 12 taxa and dating to 9500 BC-1500 AD, ArkaeoAG proposes, through archaeobotany (investigating past human-plant interactions, WP1) and paleogenomic (investigating ancient DNA, WP2) data integration (WP3), to provide novel insights into the fascinating history of a plant species - wheat – that, since its origin in the Fertile Crescent in the early Neolithic period, has spread with human communities to all continents to become the main cereal crop worldwide, comprising nowadays several thousand recorded modern varieties adapted to a wide range of environments and human uses. Different centres of origins, contacts, migrations or exchanges between founder farmers and their cultivated wheat species, independent spread over Europe, all these historical events will be recovered in the wheat archaeological and aDNA investigations covering the last 10,000 years. ArkaeoAG is aimed to (i) reconstruct micro-evolutionary steps of wheat domestication (origin and expansion) as the result of human population history (migration, admixture, culture and selection), (ii) characterize intermediate or extinct alleles of trait-related genes delivering a hidden allelic diversity to be utilized to redesign future breeding strategies. The different approaches (archaeology, archaeobotany, paleogenomics) will provide complementary evidence of relatedness between different locations and at different time scales that will be used as proxies to reconstruct the micro-evolutionary history of wheat domestication and assess how much it mirrored that of human population organization. Overall, apart being emblematic of the French patrimony internationally recognized through it breadmaking culture, wheat is a model crop for which the in depth reconstruction of micro-evolutionary steps of domestication inform precisely about Human population history (origins, contacts, movements). ArkaeoAG will finally deliver resources from ancient wheats of major interest to redesign future breeding schemes in the context of sustainable Agriculture. The coordination of the project (WP4) will be managed by a steering committee constituted by one representative of each team involved in the project to organize each step of the work progression regarding the project management and data management during the project lifetime.