Session abstracts > Session 6

Session 6: New perspectives on pioneer farming societies in the world : Uses and Misuses of resources and landscapes

A. Dufraisse¹, R.-M. Arbogast², E. Gauthier³, Ph. Lefranc⁴, G. Marchand⁵

This session aims to examine the multiple scenarios of establishment and adaptation of pioneer agro-sylvo-pastoral societies, across a great diversity of ecosystems. More specifically, it is a question of understanding why and how these communities, prehistoric and historic, choose to establish themselves in a new environment. The success of these investments in new spaces depends on the strategies of adaptation to new constraints. What then is the role of available biodiversity to be exploited?  How have these environments been transformed to meet the production needs that form the basis of agricultural or pastoral economies?  It is necessary to evaluate of course the role of the human communities already present in these places and the relations that were then established, for example starting from the cases of the European Mesolithic and Neolithic. Particular attention will be paid to identifying examples of the transmission of knowledge about ecosystems or techniques, or conversely drastic breaks in the relationship with environments. In this identification of developments over a long period of time, we must also question the means by which ecosystems were built and their resilience in the face of climate change or demographic pressure.

We propose to cover different regions of the world in order to assess and discuss the weight of environmental determinism in the establishment of habitat networks within a wide variety of ecosystems (plains/ valleys/mountains/islands; Arctic/desert/temperate environments, etc).

Several themes can be developed: 

- New methods of detection of sites, documentation of palaeoenvironments, characterization of domestication without necessarily involving genetic modifications;

- The dynamics of the establishment of communities, the occupation of territory, the mobility of settlements, between nomadism and sedentary lifestyle; 

- The attractiveness and / or the non-attractiveness of certain environments for these agro-sylvo-pastoral activities, that is to say, better qualification of ecological imperatives; 

- The diversity of strategies for acquiring resources in new environments, whether it meets food, energy or artisanal needs, in particular the question of the driving force behind technical changes (innovation or borrowing from previous populations) within various chrono-cultural complexes; 

- The modalities of provisioning, co-construction, transformation or domestication of the ecosystem;

- The causes of possible failure to adapt and the resilience of ecosystems in the event of abandonment;

- Current examples of agroforestry systems inherited from the past and which can serve as models of reflection.

1 - CNRS, UMR 7209, AASPE CNRS, Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, Paris

2 - CNRS UMR 7044 "Archimede", Université de Strasbourg

3 - Laboratoire Chrono-environnement UMR 6249/CNRS, Université de Franche-Comté, Besançon

4 - Institut Universitaire de France (IUF), Paris

5 - UMR 6566 CReAAH - CNRS, Université de Rennes 1