Travaux et Recherches archéologiques sur les cultures, les espaces et les sociétés (TRACES)

Portrait de Sandrine Costamagno, médaille d'argent du CNRS 2022, directrice de recherche au laboratoire Travaux et recherches archéologiques sur les cultures, les espaces et les sociétés (TRACES), spécialiste des relations humains/animaux au cours du Paléolithique Sandrine Costamagno s'est lancé le défi de reconstituer les interactions humain-environnement sur le temps long, en étudiant notamment la diversité des régimes alimentaires des populations de chasseurs-cueilleurs…

In southwestern Zimbabwe, the Matobo Hills are well-known for their thousands of rock art sites. Since 2017, a team of French and Zimbabwean archaeologists and rock art specialists have been studying these caves. Their goal is to date the paintings and identify the pictorial techniques used by Prehistorian artists. This includes analysing the many tools, ropes, and rocks found in the Pomongwe Cave, one of the richest of the area. New technologies are used to reveal paintings that…

A Franco-Ethiopian research team is attempting to understand the complex past of Lalibela, located in Ethiopia, one of the most important Christian sites in Africa. The aim of this partnership is to identify the progressive stages of excavation of the eleven churches on the site in order to study the history of Lalibela throughout its existence. Alongside the archaeological excavations, a digitisation project is underway. Engineers are working on the internal and…

In the forest of Plougastel, located in Finistère in Brittany, fragments of shale plates have been discovered, along with other archaeological materials. Decorated with abstract and naturalistic engravings, these tablets would date back to the early Azilian period, about 14,000 years ago. This period, still little known to prehistorians, is nevertheless important because it marks the transition between the previous period, the Magdalenian, and the Azilian, the period at the beginning of which…

An international and multidisciplinary team of researchers sets out in search of the origins of man in southern Africa, in the Aha Hills (Namibia), a limestone massif whose geological evolution provides an ideal fossil record. Paleogeological exploration of this karst landscape makes it possible to refine the speleogenesis of the caves and to precisely locate the paleokarst, these cavities filled with sediments that could contain remains of ancient hominids.

This film takes a look back on the career of Muriel Labonnelie, a scholar specialised in Greco-Roman ophthalmology in her research at the LAMS laboratory (Laboratoire d'Archéologie Moléculaire et Structurale/laboratory of molecular and structural archaeology) into collyrium tablets. These tablets designate local action medications used on the conjunctiva to treat eye conditions. They provide valuable information on Roman medicine. They started to be listed as early as the eighteenth century…

Established in 2009, the Haut-Vicdessos valley Human and Environment Observatory (OHM, Observatoires Hommes-Milieux) in one of those entities created in France and in the world by the CNRS's INEE (Institut Ecologie et Environnement/ Institute of Ecology and Environment) and pooled together as part of the DRIIHM excellence laboratory, or Labex. Its director, Didier Galop, makes a presentation of this cross-disciplinary observatory whose mission is to observe, document and investigate into…

The Chauvet Pont-d' Arc cave in the Ardèche department has just been listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It is a treasure that the general public will be allowed to discover from 2015 onwards by visiting its replica, the so-called "Caverne du Pont-d'Arc" made up of facsimiles of some twenty panels. Gilles Tosello, a prehistoric plastic artist, describes the technique he uses to replicate one of these frescoes, "the panel of horses".