Search

International audience; Urban zones on alluvial plains offer considerable geoarchaeological potential for understanding river dynamics over large time spans and their relationship with land use, because of the extensive subsoil data that is available. In the alluvial plain of Tours, lying between the Loire and the Cher, multidisciplinary studies of the relationships between societies and environment have been conducted as part of an archaeological research programme launched in the 1960s. A sedimentary database containing data for 1309 surveys has been compiled and assembled in a geographic information system to produce geostatistical models of valley bottom geomorphology. The stratigraphy and chronology of alluvial filling have also been studied with information and C14 and OSL dating obtained during archaeological operations. Taken together, the results offer a new interpretation of the morphological evolution of the alluvial plain of Tours from the Weichselian to the present day, by providing new information that either validates or invalidates previous hypotheses: bedrock incision prior to the end of the Weichselian Upper Pleniglacial, coarse sedimentation during the Lateglacial, relative morphological stability up to the late Holocene. The morphological context of the first human settlements, which are not concentrated on the low alluvial reliefs, and the role of urbanization conditions on the present morphology of the valley floor are also presented. This applied study shows the relevance of combining different methodological approaches.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305440311004389; International audience; In South Africa, air photos were used in the 1960s and 1970s to plot distribution maps of pre-colonial stone-walled structures in order to study the peopling of this landscape. Different architectural styles of stone-walled structures were attributed to different cultures, who shared a mixed agricultural and pastoralist economic base and a cattle centered world-view. New technologies such as Google Earth satellite imagery as well as Geographic Information System software justify revisiting these structures as they facilitate more complex analyses of larger databases. The spatial analysis of remotely sensed settlement data from the Suikerbosrand Nature Reserve near Johannesburg shows significant changes in settlement patterns from dispersed homesteads to nucleated towns during the last two or three centuries before colonial times. These changes echo similar patterns reported in the neighboring North West Province, where they have been interpreted as a sequence of evolution in social, political and economic complexity. In the Suikerbosrand reserve climate change, conflict and other factors may have helped bring about the observed changes in settlement patterns.