The aim of this project is to better understand the last stage of the production chain of a metal, lead, which was omnipresent in the Roman period, from the end of the Republic and under the Empire, that is, its marketing, its organisation, its logistics and its constraints, and the management of the resource. We propose here to work on one of the manufactured products that required large quantities of metal, the fistulae aquariae, or lead pipes that formed the water conveyance networks that Roman cities were equipped with. The latter provide information, both epigraphic (names of the craftsmen and/or clients) and geochemical (elemental and isotopic composition of the metal, which is that of the original ore), which, if duly analysed and cross-referenced, could provide information on the techniques used to manufacture the pipes, the origin of the metal used on them and, consequently, the sources of supply for the market, the evolution of the latter over time and the commercial strategies put in place. Epigraphy will allow us to better understand, thanks to the systematic inventory and the study of the names found on the pipes, the organisation of the lead market from the point of view of its actors, both private and public (emperors, cities), and the relationships they maintained between them. The project is therefore fundamentally interdisciplinary: it brings together researchers in history, archaeology and archaeometry around common problems. It will focus on several distinct geographical sectors, Rome and Ostia, Campania, Aquileia and Veneto, the middle Rhone valley and the cities of Mediterranean Gaul, which functioned as independent markets, but which should be compared in order to draw general conclusions about the global trade in Roman lead.

The Phoceans and Etruscans made their cultural mark on the North-Mediterranean area. Finished products, raw materials, ideas, beliefs and ritual practices circulated widely and played their part in the rapid evolution of Mediterranean societies. 5 sites in the north-western Mediterranean (Tarquinia, Aléria, Marseille, Lattes / La Monédière, Ampurias), have been selected to develop an innovative transdisciplinary study combining (1) a technical approach to archaeological material, ( 2) chemical (GC-MS) and proteomics analyzes, (3) archaeobotanical study. The objective is to identify the plant and animal raw materials used in Etruscan, Phocean and Gallic rituals for the same period (6th-4rd century BC) and to help to shed light on the gestures and meaning of ritual (rite of commensality), by using data which complements the material/ physical evidence usually provided by archeology, and by a comparative approach.

The Celtic, Etruscan, Italic and Phénico-punic cultures did not leave us literary sources concerning the funeral rites. Their knowledge is allowed thanks to various iconographic, epigraphic and especially archaeological approaches which were gradually organized with the contribution of the new developments of the archaeology funeral. The archebotanic and the archeozoology supply fundamental data on essential constituents of the rite: the bloody and non-bloody sacrifice (the biological offerings in graves and their immediate environment). Due to their nature, more visible than seeds and fruits, the animal bones were very early studied in funeral context. On the other hand, the presence of rests of plant food, carpet of flowers, coniferous substances or incenses, determined thanks to micro and macro rests is more delicate to bring to light. It's the same for residues preserved in recipients. Besides, hardly few studies were realized on the non-bloody offerings in the frame chronological geography chosen. A large-scale analysis on the nature and the reasons of the deposit of biological offerings been lacking totally. Harmful situation, at first by the wealth of information that this type of studies brought for Roman period to the knowledge of the rites for simply a decade and then because the methods of investigation are reliable and easy to implement. On the other hand, an important category of funeral offerings remains mostly invisible for the archaeologists; the amorphous organic materials, produced solid or fluids contained in recipients which, by anthropological action and natural phenomenon(fall of the vase in the grave, intervention of sediments, chemical change in time) seems to have totally disappeared. chemical and genetic technics allow to identify the original materials from their chemical markers or from fragments of sequences DNA, partially preserved. The appeal to these technologies is still relatively rare. Indeed, the obtaining of positive and exploitable results depends on numerous parameters that the archaeologists cannot always master; only an interdisciplinary work can guarantee the relevance of the studies. The objective of the program MAGI is to set up an interdisciplinary approach combining various methods of excavations, takings and analyses of the visible and invisible rests of organic products preserved in the grave. At first, a stratigraphic excavation of the whole grave but also inside of the recipients combining size grading, sieving and macrophotocrafic shots will on one hand allow to encircle the nature of the various coats observed and on the other hand to select the takings for identifications of the botanical and ichthyologic rests. Secondly, will be selected, if necessary, materials and recipients (by the invisible impregnations of their walls) for physico-chemical and genetic analyses allowing the precise identification of the residues and contained. This combined, crossed and treated on a hierarchical basis approach of the various methods and the techniques will be possible thanks to the collaboration of eight teams of research and a wide panel of complementary disciplines. It will allow to exploit at best the archaeological, biological and mineralogical data of the contents of the archaeological recipients, in a frame of collaboration pluri-and interdisciplinary. Three seminaries will be organized as well as a colloquium of the end of program presenting all the results. The MAGI program will give rise to three publications (the acts of the colloquium, a catalog of exhibition and an on-line database), to a workshop of doctoral formation in Rome (French School of Rome: it will concern the potentialities and the limits offered by the botanical, zoological, chemical and genetic analyses of the organic products), two workshops of specialist training (the one in France in Mont-Beuvray, the other one in Italy in Naples) addressing the professionals of the archaeology, and the exhibition in the museum of Lattes.

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.

VINICULTURE aims to integrate innovative methods in archeosciences to identify the characteristics and the diversity of grapevines and wines produced in France, since the origins of viticulture to the Middle Ages. Wine plays a major social and symbolic role since Protohistory. It is a prized exchange product carried over lost distances. The grapevine became a major plant species in terms of economy, landscape, culture and symbolism. Great progress has been accomplished lately by French archaeology concerning the history of vine cultivation and wine making: the circulation of wine, extension of vine cultivation under roman rule, production sites and techniques, vineyards and plantation practices. Despite this progress, fundamental aspects remain unclear. Our knowledge of the wines available before the Middle Ages derives mainly from written documents of different origins and sparse inscriptions on amphorae. Concerning the vines, written documents are practically unusable, and the first real information has been provided by archaeobotany. We now take advantage of recent methodological advances (Morphogeometry, Next Generation Sequencing) to put forward a holistic approach, no longer considering grapevines and wine as generic categories, but instead describing their diversity and analyzing their spatial and chronological dynamics in France, from the Neolithic to the Middle Ages. France is an excellent area to observe the evolution of vine cultivation and wine making in the long run, making it possible to integrate most of the major Euro-Meditteranean exchanges concerning wine, such as the Phoenician, Greek and Roman colonial movements and cultural changes linked to the spread of Christianity and Islam. France also offers the perfect background to study the diffusion of viticulture from the Mediterranean to temperate Europe and its implications in terms of adaptation and re-composition of the diversity of vines and wine. We will analyze plant remains as well as archaeological containers (pottery and wood jars) collected according to strict sampling procedures. Our approach will combine archaeobotany, geometric morphometrics, archaeogenetics, biochemistry and experimental archaeology. By exploiting the potential of Database I2AF and the national network of collaborations Bioarcheodat, Archaeobotany will provide access to a large data set and supply the indispensable background for the observation of the dynamics of Grapevine and of its use since the Neolithic. The most expensive analyses will be restricted to the most promising sites and to the period Bronze Age – Middle Ages. Ancien DNA and Morphometry will provide the means to identify the traits of cultivated grapevines (colour, productivity) and their parenthood with wild grapevines and modern cultivars. As a result, it will be possible to enquire about the geographic origins of the archaeological varieties, to trace the pathways of diffusion and evolution mechanisms. Archaeogenetics and Biochemistry applied to the study of wine jars will provide evidence on the type of wines: of grapes and/or of other fruits, colour, use of additives for aroma and conservation. The role of yeast and bacteria in the fermentation process and in wine conservation will be taken in consideration for the first time. Statistics and models, will allow us to combine data obtained at different levels of analysis, with the information provided by other archaeological sources and by the modern genetic diversity of grapevine and microorganisms, aiming at reconstructing the geo-historical dynamics of vines and wines, in relation to environmental and socio-economic changes.