Peril of the sea for the Mesolithic sites of Western France
Résumé
The archaeological remains of prehistoric maritime hunter-gatherer societies were mostly swept away or submerged by the rise of the ocean during the Holocene. The slowing down of this marine transgression in the middle of the 7th millennium cal BC allows us to access archaeological sites on a restricted stretch of coastline in southern Brittany. Thrilling anthropological perspectives then emerge concerning the land/sea economic networks of hunter-gatherers and the historical role of these coastal human communities especially during the neolithization. The threats to this coastal heritage are as natural as anthropogenic. This article then evokes several methods of archaeological intervention tested for about twenty years on the three main types of sites currently known: 1/ archaeological level protected by a dune such as Beg-er-Vil (Quiberon, Morbihan), 2/ dwelling in a rockshelter as Roc'h Santeg Leton (Santec, Finistère), 3/ site at the top of the cliffs (everywhere). Very threatened by ocean rages, their exploration is conditioned by an inadequate legislative framework and by financial and logistical means well below the scientific and heritage stakes.
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